Vacation Wars
by Aunt Ginny Potter
Summary: She didn't have one. Voldemort had a plan, her parents had a plan, Lord knew James had a plan, even Petunia did, but she'd always just made up her own path as she went along. She never did realize that everyone knew about it except her. Then James wanted face-to-face time with the Dark Lord, and he was dragging her along, but it was summer, only she never had a choice. And he knew.
1. Fairs and Seer Cassandra

**Hey! I'm back! With a new story, which is- maybe sorta irresponsible. Let's see how it goes and pray I don't slack, yes? Good, then you can expect irregular updating now. Please review!**

**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter.**

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Once, a very long time ago when she didn't know about pain and sacrifice and loss (_nor_, whispered the crinkly-eyed, fond, optimist part of her, _of magic, love and belonging_), when the lullabies were sung to instead of by her, Lily had gone with her family to a little, rusty old fair out of way of absolutely everything. It was one of those poorly thought-out decisions (they ended up arriving home from their vacation, their original purpose, at roughly three in the morning) that make, in the end, for the best memories in anyone's childhood. It was also the kind of decisions that parents make when their children unite to produce the exactly right amount of whining and begging and no one's too terribly foul-mooded or tired.

This, as it was back when Petunia still giggled and laughed and had fun with her, instead of at her expense, meant that their drive took an awfully loopy detour that was as much fun as any impromptu activity always is.

And Lily had fun. She jumped and ran and increased her energy when she was supposed to be depleting it. She was loud as only a kid her age knows how to be, and she tried every ride, which, admittedly, wasn't saying much. And, by the time the sun was setting and her mother was half amused, half horrified at the vague idea of the time they'd get home, she was determined to leave nothing unexplored, which meant visiting the 'tarot reader', more out of principle than interest, really.

She called herself Seer Cassandra, even though at least two people stopped by who called her Biddy and Kiki respectively, which confused Lily at the time. Later, when she learned about real Seers, or as real as Lily was ready to believe (back before a little green-eyed baby boy who made beliefs not matter when faced with her limitless need to protect him from all manner of dangers, even if they were announced by dubious prophecies), Lily immediately and vividly remembered this woman whom she'd met once at a tender age and snorted. She did not stop to wonder why she'd been so present in her memory – she was as fleeting a thought then as she'd been a presence in her life when Lily had gone to a fair that one time.

Seer Cassandra dressed very weirdly, all bracelets and rings and smelly hair products. She had a wart which Lily, for some reason, interestedly noted was fake. Petunia had shrilly wanted to know if all those chewed-through old shawls she'd worn didn't make her hot in the summer. The place smelled stuffy, like it wasn't aired often, and it was dark, though the candles did let Lily know that one wrong move of her arm could knock down all sorts of breakable-looking things. And then Seer Cassandra wouldn't be able to reassure her that the flowers at her wedding with a faceless knight who rode a white horse wouldn't be lilies, because her parents would want to leave.

But she didn't talk about flowers. Lily had not had extensive conversations with many tarot readers, but she had met one or two before, and, although they'd dressed just like Seer Cassandra, she found that they had been a good deal louder and also a good deal less creepy. Seer Cassandra just didn't seem to be flamboyant enough to be an Occultist. She singled Lily out the moment they were within her sight – Lily had a strange feeling of nervousness, and she didn't know why – and, though reluctant and frowning, her parents warily watched as their youngest sat directly in front of her.

She smiled, all blackened teeth (from shadows or not), and she produced a dirty, dusty pack of unlabeled cards that looked and felt, at least to Lily, rather more real and more fascinating than anything else she'd seen in that tent thus far. No one spoke, and even so, it was too quiet – no invisible thumpings, impossible wind rushes, nothing like she'd experienced before. Seer Cassandra just took out the cards and began.

In the end, the cards that Lily ended up picking were no more interesting than the rest – she chose them based on the positions of the nicks and cuts on the wood table. First, Seer Cassandra turned a card which, with a smile, she called The Lovers. Lily eagerly mentioned the flowers – but Seer Cassandra shook her head.

"I think, sweetheart, that this is more of a setting. Young love, early marriage, unsoiled, innocent and rather naïve ideals. You'll get there, don't you worry. But I don't really know about the flowers."

The next card had the biggest nick beneath it. Cassandra turned it and seemed interested by the result – she said this card was The Magician. Lily grinned back and asked if it meant she was a fairy with magic powers.

"Perhaps." Seer Cassandra conceded in all seriousness. "I have never really met a fairy, so I could not tell you. But look here, little girl, and pay attention." Lily disliked being perceived as a little anything, but she obeyed and followed Seer Cassandra's finger to a little symbol – like an eight that had been pushed to the ground like Petunia sometimes did – over the wizard-person's head. "Infinity." She murmured, a faraway and uncannily focused expression on her face.

Lily asked if it meant she'd live forever. Seer Cassandra seemed amused by the idea.

"A corporeal existence can't be infinite. People who try to live forever generally do so because they know they've hardly done enough with the smaller piece of a smaller infinity they usually don't work to be gifted. No," She continued, and Lily listened with a rapt attention she tended to reserve to the little math she was allowed to learn at her age. "I don't believe you will stand out for your unusually long life. As a matter of fact, I'm rather certain you'll stand out for the opposite." Now Lily's parents looked ready to interrupt, but Lily was still looking unfazed and fascinated, and, almost like there was a bubble around the table and its occupants, the idea of quieting Seer Cassandra died in their minds.

Petunia's frown flickered from Lily to her parents. She was quite sure this wasn't how a tarot reading happened, but, then again, Seer Cassandra didn't quite act like a tarot reader anyway.

"But I wouldn't worry." Seer Cassandra smiled her blackish smile again, and the crinkles around her eyes weren't laughing. "It stands to reason that if the man who lives forever doesn't do much worth mentioning, the woman who lives twenty-odd years leaves her mark. Makes it" Seer Cassandra tapped the card again. "infinite. You'll live forever, dear; just not by actually living."

Lily hadn't worried, although she wasn't quite sure why. She just figured that if she were going to die early, she'd probably have a good reason for it.

By now, they were all (but Lily) regretting the last stop. But, as if the magic Seer Cassandra called hers was real, they stood still, watching and listening and doing nothing to stop it, like people do when they suffer but prefer the pain to the discomfort of fixing what was wrong.

The next card Seer Cassandra called Ten of Batons. "I can't tell you much about this one." She admitted. "Although I think it's more linked to those that surround you rather than to you, exactly." She stared at it some more. "Betrayal, disguise, shady choices, wavering paths – I think those are not quite certain. Still," She said, turning the card to face down. "It's never a nice card to see."

"This is - fairly centered in a specific time of your life. All the cards. Of course, not everything about them is – but most, at least." She elaborated. "Almost as if your destination had been decided upon for a while now, even if the road you take hasn't."

She seemed amused at what came next. "The Hanged Man. Prophecy. Sometimes I think I surprise myself as a Seer." Then she focused with too much intensity on Lily. "Sacrifice." She said no more about it.

Seer Cassandra paused before turning the last card. "You know, these are not very nice cards." She murmured. "Of course, it would depend on my reading prowess – but it seems unfair to such a lovely young girl." She tilted her head. "The cards you've chosen – they're each linked to a different season. That's rather strange. Summer." She pulled at The Lovers, quite a sunny card. "Autumn." She declared The Magician. "The Ten of Batons is a Winterish, cold card, of course. Which leaves The Hanged Man, Spring. Surprising, isn't it?" She smiled. "Spring _is _the season of birth. I would expect that – well, what these cards spell should go rather in the same manner."

Lily didn't really understand. But her parents were starting to clear their throats, fighting through the numbing smells and air and words that made fog of their minds, and they were becoming agitated even as Seer Cassandra serenely turned the last card.

Lily stood up quietly, waiting for her last words. "The Tower." Seer Cassandra wavered. She turned the card firmly downwards. "I think there is no fifth season." She said softly. "Need we see this card, Lily?"

And in that moment, when Lily met her eyes and didn't look away, she realized that maybe Seer Cassandra's flamboyant-less-ness was expressed differently, like in her knowledge, her probably real Seer-ness and her wiser persona she didn't seem willing to show to anyone but Lily. She also realized that maybe that last card mattered a little bit, and Seer Cassandra, who had been positively stoic the whole time she was speaking and interesting everyone else in not doing the same, had cracked and decided Lily didn't need to know.

That was okay. Lily, instinctively, didn't want to know either.

She walked out with her parents and didn't think about it anymore. Not consciously anyway. Even if she never particularly forgot.

All the same, she never saw Seer Cassandra again, and the fair, when Lily revisited it once, an adult with a powerful urge to get back what she had had then and gradually lost, was nothing but a memory. Literally – the place where she remembered it being was total wild, the kind of place that surely hasn't seen people in centuries, if ever.

But she remembered. Every word. That was part of the problem. The map that, early, she had been drawn of her life never really appeared to her as any kind of guideline. Frankly, it didn't even figure much in her thoughts (though when it did, it was obsessive). That was mostly why she only started paying attention to it when most of the cards had been used and done with, been matched with their moments in her life.

But she didn't know. She wished she had, later, as she tried to avoid the inevitable, as she held up an umbrella to try and stop a tsunami, but by then it was too late anyway. Still, she didn't regret most of the choices she made. Knowing, understanding, there was little she'd change, she was fairly sure. Granted, the little could have proven useful, but she didn't make a habit of crying over spilt milk, even if, in the end, spilt milk was something she'd rather have gotten instead. That was another story, though, and it was stupid to start with the ending anyway.

It wasn't the end she was stuck on, anyway. She was mostly thinking about the beginning, about that sunny card that spelt summer and warmth. It'd probably been the nicest one, really. No one could really blame her for thinking about it.

She wished it had stayed that way, now, even if, back then, things looked the bleakest she'd ever thought she'd see. Even if she'd cried a couple of times, she wished she could cry as much as she had then, but later. It would probably reduce drastically the amount of tears _he_ had to see.

But she couldn't really go back. She could only remember.

It was better than nothing.


	2. Potter and The Plans

_**YOU-KNOW-WHO'S GROWING POWER BUILDS PANIC AND DEATH**_

_YOU-KNOW-WHO GAINS THREE MORE ASSUMED INNER-CIRCLE FOLLOWERS AS DEATH EATERS SIGHTINGS SPREAD TO INCLUDE THE WHOLE OF UNITED KINGDOM_

Lily didn't particularly feel like reading the rest of the article. It wasn't as though it had anything _new _in it. She didn't think the Daily Prophet did much more than change a few names here and there each week anymore, and their general shortage in colorful wording was starting to show. She was depressed enough as it was.

She dropped it on her desk and then dropped herself on top of her bed, mentally willing someone, _any_one (she'd even take Potter), to do something that demanded her full attention elsewhere. Hopefully else_when_, too. She shut her eyes.

She wanted to forget the monochromatic letters, wanted to forget the paper they were printed on, Merlin, if she could forget the desk it was lying on, that'd be great. She'd actually not mind forgetting the whole world, and the people in it, because _clearly _they weren't worth remembering.

It was bad enough that these things were happening, and it was worse that she couldn't tell her family. Worst of all, however, (because there was still a category above those other two), was not telling them when they were part of those who were in danger. And the fact that that choice was hers was even in a category of its own over those other three.

It didn't matter. Obviously she didn't think it was best that they knew anyway, otherwise she'd have told them already. It hadn't reached them at all, so it wasn't a problem (she tried hard to pretend the word _yet_ hadn't crossed her mind). Other than the fact that she felt exhausted at ten o'clock in the morning, everything was fine. Fine.

"Hey, Evans!" Except for _that_.

_So _tired. _Such _a headache. _Please._

"_Evans_!" The voice was getting louder. "You know, the faster you answer, the faster I'll leave you alone." He suggested, exasperated.

"Yeah." She muttered to the pillow. "In roughly four hours, when you're satisfied with the ruins that used to be my neighborhood." She completely regretted her 'even Potter' comment. She _wouldn't _take him. Karma had to understand.

"_Evans!_" Now it wasn't just louder, it was more irritated. "I _will _go up there!"

No matter the annoyance getting up would prove to be, it was considerably preferable to Potter getting even remotely near her bedroom.

Lily threw the window violently open. He probably ought to know she was far from a good mood, if he wanted to be a pain in the arse. "_What_?"

He didn't look amused – he wasn't smirking, anyway – so she relaxed. _Marginally_. He actually didn't seem happy about whatever it was Lily was preventing him from talking about. That also didn't mean he didn't look good, which was information she stored away like she usually did, because she liked her sanity, yeah?

"Did you read the newspaper this morning?" He demanded. Her face fell as he brought up the one thing she was counting on him distracting her from. _The one thing_ he might actually prove useful in doing. "I figured. You want to keep shouting through the window, or shall I go up and prevent the neighbors thinking you to be a mad woman?"

"I'm pretty sure they don't need to hear me shouting at the street to think that." She muttered, shutting the window and walking down the stairs anyway.

James walked straight in with that familiarity she didn't remember offering him. She actually didn't remember offering him much, like her address, for example. It was the only invitation he seemed to need to make his visits, which she didn't particularly want, hence the whole not-offering-him-her-address thing. Since he hadn't told her how he had it the first ten times he'd dropped by for a surprise visit she didn't answer the door for, she didn't figure her luck lay with the twentieth. Thankfully, she'd be leaving on vacation the next day, and there was no way he had the address to _that_.

She hoped.

Having a stalker wasn't all that glamorous. Having a good-looking git for a stalker just made it worse.

Unruly hair, grin that would surely lead to laugh lines in due time, expensive clothes, he radiated easy-going (Lily had never really gotten along with that) – and also arrogance, which was the part she really couldn't stand. Potter had made a bad impression the first day she'd laid eyes on him. Truthfully, not the first minutes, but she was storming out of the compartment they were sharing within the hour, so he couldn't get that much praise.

Her problem with him was mostly that, while he wasn't prejudiced against much, Slytherins got his immediate disdain (and his immediate curses) – she didn't even really get _why_. It didn't help that her best friend was (had been) a Slytherin. Nor that, not two years later, it'd suddenly downed on him that she was both a girl and not falling at his feet.

She wouldn't say it went downhill from there, because it had been downhill from the beginning, but that was really when the slide had gotten sharper.

The years went by, and James hadn't gotten any less appealing – or high on top of the mountain, which served as a cooler for any other part or aspect of his that might or not be smoking. He was probably the most liked person at the school. No one seemed to understand why she was so snappish toward him, especially after what Snape ended up doing. No girl seemed to understand, either, why she wouldn't go out with him, because they all melted every time the common room became a Valentine's card featuring her, or when he made the entire Great Hall watch a magnified version of himself sing why he'd die for her, and they didn't get why she didn't too. None of them seemed to understand why none of these grand gestures didn't seem to do anything for her, no one seemed to understand why they didn't mean a thing. Because, not only were they too big to be true, but for every single one of them, there were three occasions where Snape was found unconscious and in his underwear, hanging limp over the lake with the Giant Squid, or spontaneously started to grow mushrooms in areas where _nothing of the kind should be growing_, or got into a good old-fashioned duel with one (or all four) of the Marauders. She was completely alone in disliking him. Except for the Slytherins. It didn't comfort her to know that that was her company.

Lily would like to establish that that was _not _the reason she suddenly started tolerating him (although most certainly not to the point of house calls). Even if it helped. Because _tolerating him _was the extent of her regard to the prick. The black, shiny-haired prick. _Bad Lily!_

He went straight to her living room, and she wasn't sure if he was stupidly brave or just stupid. It scared her that he seemed to pick the exact moments her parents weren't home – maybe more than it scared her that he knew where her living room was. It also made her mad, but while she was fairly certain he was aware of the second (Lord knew she yelled it at him enough), the first was actually something he was perfectly fine not knowing.

She mused on her parents for a little while. Potter was tall, handsome, charming and smart enough when he didn't play dumb (those were also a whole lot of somethings he was just _fine _not even guessing). He knew how to act like a Muggle, he was outwardly nice and he had table manners. Her parents would love him visiting. That was mostly the reason she didn't complain their absence when he did.

Lily complained a bit too much about him, she knew. Didn't it sound nice, to have a cute guy so obsessed about you he asked you out once every full moon (and a couple more times every other one) and visited you in the summer completely unannounced and unwanted?

That might actually _not _sound nice, though.

It was sad that it was the war that made her get some kind of perspective. That, or it just made her depressed enough to exhaust her. Either way, her arguments with him were a lot less fiery and a lot wittier. (Which was good, she guessed, because being depressed was a cause to a lot more consequences than being more tired than she should be.) It was pointless to be fighting him, when she knew that he had, at least, a decent code of morals - her own - and that, just as she planned to fight, so did he. (The fact that she wasn't surprised at that should have been her first clue.) She didn't know what it was, between him, his friends and the Slytherins, but he was serenely and almost carelessly certain of his future against Voldemort.

It made her a little uneasy, but not enough yet. Not enough for her to keep thinking about it.

He watched as he made himself confortable, dropping his broom (she really hoped he hadn't flown that all the way to her door – carrying a broom around in the street was weird enough) on the couch. _Her _couch. _Her _living room. _Her _house. In case none of that was clear.

"You know, this was cute when-" She paused. "I forget my point."

"Ha." He said, drying his word to the point _she _wanted water. "Adorable, but I think what I got here might interest you to the point of being memorable." He waved a piece of (frightfully) ordinary parchment tantalizingly. She wondered if she was supposed to know what it was, and then decided it was either explosive or a reason for her to prolong the conversation _much _further than she wanted to.

She wasn't feeling like being baited. "That's wonderful, Potter, but I think we both agreed you'd stop drawing pictures of me during second grade-"

"Funny," Potter said, though his cheeks seemed a little pinker than usual. "but that was more of an ultimatum on your part than a mutual decision."

"Yes. Otherwise you might actually _still _be drawing them. Honestly, you should be thanking me for the little reputation you have."

"Can we talk about this now?" He asked irritably, slapping the parchment on _her_ table in _her _kitchen, a division in _her _house. He didn't use to get irritated (except when it involved Snape and her) before Hogsmeade had been invaded by a group of Death Eaters and there was nobody but students to take care of it.

"Can I know why you've been popping up at my house whenever you please since the term ended? As in, _what, in the name of all that's Holy are you doing here?_"

"No. I love being a mystery for you to solve."

"Wonderful. Fancy seeing you, then."

"_Here._" He unfolded it, exasperated, and, apparently, deciding to abandon stupid, which was a little surprising. Whether it was because refusing to look was more than a bit childish or because of his emphatic movements, she glanced. And then she was right beside him, greedily taking it all in with wide eyes.

"_How-?_" She sputtered.

He grinned broadly, clearly relishing her reaction and her closeness. She didn't correct it. "I work in mysterious ways."

"How?" She asked more firmly, tearing her eyes away from the map.

He deflated. "It was an Arithmancy algorithm. You take all the fun out of things." He grumbled, making to put it away again. She stopped him. She didn't let her hand linger on his arm any longer than necessary, or at least that's what she told herself.

Then she turned her attention to the map that depicted every town hitherto hit by Death Eaters – and then predictions for the next two months. It seemed perfectly legitimate – she had a map herself, but hers only went as far as past attacks. What she hadn't done, however, was find a pattern, which James clearly had. It even had margin for error – there were red dots flagging, like little spots of blood, the probable targets, and then pink areas of tense possibilities. It was mad. There was no way James-

Every single one of the Marauders' pranks came to her head then, all rushing to see who managed to prove her wrong first (much like Potter himself). One in particular managed to convince her quite well - one which she'd had the power to prevent, but hadn't, and certainly _not_ because she hadn't been an uptight brat (at least Potter and Black had been bullying, arrogant prats, which seemed worse to her). It was the last class of First Year Transfiguration, and even Professor McGonagall was being lenient. There was an unusual amount of noise which didn't seem to be bothering her – she'd told them to practice any spells they wanted, as long as they were related to her class. James and Sirius had immediately taken advantage of this and began trying to get Peter to volunteer to be the subject of a seventh year spell in a page titled 'Materialization of your Quintessence' that they swore they could manage. When Peter looked as though he might actually do it (James and Sirius had convinced him with their (truthful) statement that they were O-students at this particular subject), Remus intervened, which stopped Lily from doing the same.

This, however, left her ears open for whatever they were saying – Lily had never been particularly trusting - and for what they began discussing next: an end-of-year prank. As if that wasn't a horrifying prospect on its own, they described next an elaborated plan involving Switching Spells, the Levitation and _Incendio_ charms, a replicating charm she'd never heard of (something that made her incredibly jealous) and a simple Transfiguration spell. The only thing that appeased her was the fact that it sounded ridiculously impossible. That only made all the more ego-crushing when, during the end of year feast, the food somehow turned back into the plants and animals it had once been (though the Marauders and Lily, due to her eavesdropping, knew these had actually been flown all the way from the forest to the alcove near the Great Hall, where the actual food would have replaced it until someone went to investigate the smell), and every single unoccupied stretch of wall became graffiti-ed with Muggle wildlife protection mottos, which Filch couldn't get off afterwards because what he was trying to wash was Transfigured wall, and McGonagall took her time in explaining (she was quite proud of her first year students' work, even if she daren't admit that to another soul). And then when she spoke the word 'Transfiguration' right in front of the defaced walls, they burst into fire, which was meant to be the Marauders' way of cleaning up after themselves; only it had so far backfired due to Filch's inability to willingly talk about anything magic, which made him work much more than he had to.

So maybe there _was _way.

Still, principle dictated she stare at him with her eyebrows raised in disbelief until he explained further. "Okay, Remus dealt with the algorithm." He admitted with a grin.

"This is-" She was speechless, she was woman enough to admit, even if it only seemed to make James puff up as she gestured at the map in awe.

"I know." He smiled proudly. "They fell into a pattern eventually. The human mind can only stand random for so long. Still, once in a while there's a couple of mad turns, which I'm fairly sure are Lestrange's fault, but we included those in the calculations."

"You almost sound smart." She said wonderingly. He made a face at her, successfully proving her wrong. She narrowed her eyes. "Question is, why are you telling _me_ this?"

He hesitated – she could see it, the way his fingers fumbled a second or two on the parchment, the way he made long, tense work of tucking it into itself, the way his eyes flickered to hers behind his askew glasses, and she instantly had a very, very bad feeling.

The war wasn't a new topic. Not to her, not to any other wizard or witch, may they be supporters of whoever or whoever-else (she quite forgot who, exactly, was supposed to be the main face of their _side_ – even if she were inclined to say Dumbledore, it wasn't like it was any sort of organized movement except for a bunch of kids barely out of school and a handful of teachers). It'd been going on for almost as long as she remembered being an – admittedly sidelined - active part of the Wizarding World. It was also the reason for the sidelined status. It had grown, in her Hogwarts time, from a madman with a wand to a calculated psychopath with a group of followers to a Grindelwald kind of problem and then past that. Far past that.

To her, Voldemort stood at a crossroads. Only it wasn't really a crossroads, because though she had two choices, she really only had one. She was involved no matter what – her _'kind' _was what it was all about, the whole root – so she could either walk up to the madman and ask for her death, or she could walk up to the madman and demand his; using her wand and anything else she could get her hands on, because, realistically, if she didn't stand a chance anyway, it was stupid to narrow her resources. Maybe that was why fighting with James wasn't really fighting anymore. Maybe. That _maybe_ really had no business being there.

To James, though, Voldemort was nothing other than a moral paradox. What he was doing was _bad_, and _evil_, but what had a seventeen-year-old anything to do with it? He was pureblood. He could perfectly stand quietly aside. Instead, he decided to jump into all the mess and the paradoxes and be dumb and make a loud target of himself. She didn't care to admit that it brought up a little bit of respect she didn't know she was capable of having for him.

And she did have it. Right up until he said doing something as stupid as "I thought I might interest you in a field trip to the location of the next predicted attack. At the time of the next predicted attack. In the esteemed company of the Marauders." He added as an afterthought.

She let the silence reign for a beat or two.

"Are you quite mad?"

"See, that's _exactly _what Sirius said you'd say!" He whined. "Must you prove him right?!"

"Oh, shut up!" Lily fumed, wondering how anyone could be _this_ thick. "Let me get this right: you purposefully want to go somewhere you know Voldemort will be, at the _time _he's supposed to be there? Where was _Remus _when you and Black came up with this master plan?!"

"Right there." Potter answered immediately, joining his broom in making himself confortable on _her _couch. It briefly occurred to her that her family really shouldn't be long, but she was too mad to focus on it. "Making the exact same speech you are, only he added 'with no one to help', until Sirius used _Silencio _on him. I think Peter didn't know who to back." He frowned for a moment. Then he brightened. "Besides, he isn't in all of the attacks, is he? Sometimes he stays in the background. Maybe he won't be there, and it'll be just seeing Bellatrix dog-face and getting hit by Malfoy's greasy hair that I'll have to worry about." He actually sounded disappointed saying this.

"You want to _meet _him?"

He shifted uncomfortably."'Course not. 'Cause that would be crazy, and reckless, and you know me, I'm all about rules, and precaution, and better safe than sorry-"

Lily just stared at him, half wondering where he was trying to go by vomiting every word Remus had ever taught him, half sure he'd just opened his mouth, went along with it, and now he was having trouble closing it.

He broke after approximately three more seconds of inane rambling. He sounded agitated – funny, because, approximately a year ago, she'd have thought him incapable of such a nervous thing. "I- I don't know. A part of me kind of wants to know what the bloody hell runs through the bloke's mind sometimes." He ran a hand through his hair. She tried not to stare and stayed silent, crossing her arms and joining him on the couch. "Another part of me doesn't care, and just wants to bash his head in, solve the problem." He shrugged. "I can't do either if I don't meet him in some capacity. Anyway, we're all seventeen, aren't we? We're legal adults. We can make our own choices. Personally, I rather fancy going, see if I can really take a shot at him. You only live once, right?" He grinned. It was the stupidest smile she'd ever seen, even if it made her a little weak in the knees.

"James," She said, her voice a little shaky, because he was really scaring her right then. "I-You-" She shook her head, trying to clear it. "You're off your rocker." She said, fiercely. "_Completely _off your rocker. And you need to listen to Remus."

He nodded. "Usually, when someone tells me I'm off my rocker, that _is _what I do. But, see, I already know his opinion, and he's against the idea, so it's not really a good plan. He might convince me not to do it."

"_I know!_" She said, exasperated. "And, honestly, you haven't even finished school!"

"So?" He asked, rather defensively. She suddenly wondered why she was having an almost civil (or the equivalent, when it came to her and James) discussion with Potter, in her home, which she hadn't invited him into, in the middle of the summer, which was supposed to be her Potter-free time, about how it wasn't very sensible of him to seek death at the hands of Britain's latest sophisticated serial killer. What right, exactly, had she to tell him these things, give him advice, be concerned about his well-being to the point of arguing with him?

The thought fled and she kept going. "You- You're _barely _legal!"

"You know, what I hear when you say that is that I _am _legal. And so are you, and no one can tell either of us what to do. We can make our own choices. Do you want to come with me?" He asked, and in his determined tone of voice Lily felt her argument wither, and she had no idea why. She'd never had a problem arguing with him before. Then again, all their previous arguments had generally been about when she'd _never_ go out with him. Well, the end of his tirade almost could be part of one of those.

"Well, that's what no little girl's father _ever _wants to hear."

When had the door opened and closed? Lily didn't remember the door opening or closing. She was almost _positive _the door hadn't opened and closed. So if the door hadn't opened or closed, her parents, who could use no form or shape of magical transportation whatsoever, shouldn't have come in and heard that. Because the door hadn't opened and closed.

Still, they were standing there, arms crossed, raised eyebrows, clearly pretending they weren't dying inside from all the laughter they were keeping in, and they were _not _helping.

She was faintly aware that her argument had left her rather closer to Potter than she ever wanted to be, and while that was all well and good at Hogwarts where nobody thought twice of seeing Lily and James like that because obviously they were arguing (she thought, anyway), that wasn't really good in front of her parents. Especially not after Potter decided to deliver an aggravatingly ambiguous line with an intensity and graveness she _did not want her parents listening to because it could be entirely misinterpreted. _His low voice wouldn't help her argument explanation (_real _explanation) either.

"Nothing." She stood up quickly, trying to convey breeziness and total lack of concern, but really just hoping her cheeks weren't looking _that _much like her hair. Potter looked amused, because he always looked amused and there were no pillows to throw so she could hide it. "P- James was just-"

"Trying a new way of verbalizing my affections for your lovely daughter." He smiled that charming smile he could mass produce. "It's been nearly four years, I'm bound to get it right eventually. She still won't give me _one _date." He added morosely.

Lily tried to pretend she didn't want that pillow. "Yes. He was. But he was just leaving." She all but shoved his broom into his arms and him into the street. "Bye!"

Her mother, however, seemed too amused to let it go so quickly. "But aren't you going to give him an answer, sweetheart?" Her mother _never_ called her _sweetheart_. She made sure Potter could see her glare perfectly as he grinned at her under the sun. "The answer's-" She hesitated, eyeing his raised eyebrows doubtfully. "Maybe." She shut the door on his surprised face and hoped he knew she wasn't referring to the date.

She was pretty sure she wasn't referring to the date. Even if considering either the date or suicidal missions just proved how her _own _rocker was not even in sight anymore.

Her mother and her father were really nice people. They _were_. Anything that might have gone through Lily's head at that moment, as she watched them snickering without bothering to hide it, was purely temporary. Lily scowled, cursing Potter for about everything and then some, Black for encouraging him and his stupid ideas, for coming up with half of the ideas and for just existing in the first place, Remus for not getting them under control, her parents for not acting like parents, and the rest of the world for living in it. And herself, she supposed, for thinking James still looked very appetizing even when being kicked out of a house.

She needed water and her mother was blocking the entrance to the kitchen.

She was pretty, Lily's mother, in a cute pixie-like manner, short and lean and just plain _pretty_, the way only certain people can be described and whoever was listening would understand. Only she was purposefully standing in her way so that she'd have to _interact _and _talk about it _and she knew it too, which was very, very ugly. She was usually delightfully witty too, unless James Potter happened to drop by and she decided she needed to mock her daughter. Then she wasn't funny, and her jokes were lame.

Her father, she noticed, as he made an entrance to the kitchen that she used to not be stopped by her mother, was the opposite. He was tall, buff and his hair was falling off, which made for a wonderfully permanent mocking topic. He was sweet, sometimes too much, which did not make for the same, because it just made you feel guilty.

She loved them both very much, which was why James Potter stopping by with a war mindset was a very bad thing to happen. Even if, somehow, she trusted him not to purposefully reveal information he knew she didn't want them to have.

Like she was reading Lily's thoughts, her mother immediately followed her into the kitchen, bringing _him _up. And not only _him_ but _him 2.0_ as well. Her father instantly made himself scarce, because this was a subject neither she nor he wanted him knowing too much about.

"You know, that boy, he's much nicer than the one you used to hang out with during the summers." Her mother wrinkled her nose. "I always felt as though he thought as littlest as it was possible of us. Like we were rubbish." Lily involuntarily flinched, bitterly wondering how she could possibly have missed what everyone else had seen. "Not you, mind." She added, quickly and apologetically correcting herself.

"Yeah."She said quietly, almost miserable enough to go back to her room now. Then what her mother had said computed, and she frowned suspiciously. "Wait, what? You saw Po- James for all of five seconds! _And _the only thing he told you was how he was trying to _date _me! How could you possibly have formed such a high opinion of him?" She asked, indignant her own mother would betray her.

There was a pause. Lily got a horrible feeling. "He stopped by…" Her mother said vaguely. When she saw Lily's outraged face, she decided to get the whole truth out. "A few times." She admitted.

"Oh, I am going to _kill _him." Lily vowed.

Her mother frowned. "Really, Lily, this is not like you at all. He's a perfectly nice boy! What is it about him that makes you so angry?"

The fact that she did not have an answer to her mother's question perturbed Lily – a lot. _At least_, she tried to console herself, _an answer that doesn't involve telling her things I promised myself I wouldn't tell her._

Surprisingly, this excuse held for a while. At the very least, it let her sleep. Mostly because her mother dropped the subject quickly, preferring to discuss their travel arrangements and ask whether Lily was all packed yet.

The same couldn't be said for the _maybe _she'd somehow blurted out at James' departure. It'd been hours, but during the day, she'd managed to keep herself busy, and the same couldn't be said for bedtime.

It wasn't as though she_ wanted _to get herself killed. She furrowed her brows. Did she? She rejected the idea instantly. Of course not! Then why would she find it smart to say she _might _(the _maybe_ was now changing priorities – first she didn't want to give him a complete _no_, now she didn't want to give herself a full _yes_) go with him on a stupid quest to do a stupid thing they were never going to manage?

They were going to get themselves killed. That was for sure. And if she went with them, so would she. She pursed her lips.

They weren't exactly chummy BFF's. They'd never been. She didn't fully grasp why her little _rendezvous_ with James Potter hadn't been unbearably awkward. He had a restless manner of keeping everyone comfortable in his presence. Really, it was her house, during summertime, and he'd shown up out of the blue – she hadn't kicked him out; that seemed important to this particular list - wondering if she wanted to go see Voldemort. For a _chat_ (that wasn't even sarcasm – he actually did want to have a chat with You-Know-Who). And some tea, maybe, she was sure.

It was bonkers. This was bonkers. She'd faster say yes next time Potter asked her out.

_Maybe she could do both_.

For some reason, that thought was what relaxed her eyelids into closing. Merlin knew what was happening to her, but the philosophical night wonderings about her death wish reasons would really have to wait.


	3. Mum and Hogsmeade

The next morning, Lily didn't wake up to a pretty picture. Petunia was in her bedroom – Petunia was also the reason she was awake.

"Oh, good, you're up." She said briskly, tearing her eyes away from whatever it was that seemed to have been interesting her on Lily's desk.

Petunia was really skinny, but also really tall, which made her look a little like an overstretched rubber-band. When Lily looked at her from the side, she had roughly the same width as her to-be-bought seventh year History of Magic book, and every time Lily came home for the summer, she got a scare because of how different she was from just about anyone else (it'd occurred to her that she might be sick).

Worse, it seemed this year she'd decided to hack most of her hair off, which actually removed about twenty percent of her body volume. Lily didn't think her sister usually looked pretty, whatever kind of sibling that made her, but there was ugly and then there was making all the wrong choices when it came to her looks, and she didn't think Petunia was particularly ugly either.

Lily, in her best impression of the rebel she was planning on being when she left Hogwarts (and, apparently, before that too), refused to get up and stayed in bed, even if that made it harder to stare at her sister. She used both hands to rub at her face. "Yes, because you opened my window in your loudest heels."

Petunia clucked her tongue and didn't leave, and only one of those things surprised Lily. It occurred to her that she might actually have to deal with her sister and she groaned, reaching for a pillow to stuff her face in.

She hadn't wanted to wake up at all, because she preferred having her subconscious mind dealing with Potter and not remember anything in the morning. If she slept and just let her brain sort all the nonsense, there was a possibility that she might not have to deal with it during the day.

But she was awake and she could still hear Petunia's heels and her mind had clearly been slumbering during the night too, because she could already feel the stress - the kind that only appeared when she was at Hogwarts and James and the Marauders were actually part of her problems. She'd never had it in the summer, which was the argument her irritation was using as the foundation of the headache of the day.

Through the pillow, the sun rays moved against the shadows, and Lily peeked from behind it to see what her sister was doing, and why Petunia would willingly walk even further than she had to into her bedroom. She was still trying to sneak looks at her desk, which seemed rather off, and Petunia was _never _off. "Tuney, may I ask what you're doing?" Lily frowned. "Actually, why are you even here? I thought you were ditching us for Vernon's family?"

She got that face she always did when she was asked anything and sneered at her. "If you must know, Vernon has got a very important internship at his father's company and our vacation has been postponed. Mum told me that if that was the case, I might as well join the family trip." She gave Lily a particularly nasty look at these words. "Even if some members do seem to appear for the holidays and disregard everyone else in the in-between."

Lily forced a smile, letting the pillow drop to the side and sitting up on the bed. "Really? I had no idea you've been so busy during my school years. Mum and Dad never mentioned anything of the sort in the letters we exchanged twice a week. I did send you letters too, at least in the beginning, but they don't seem to have reached destination."

Petunia pursed her lips. She didn't leave. Her eyes strayed to her desk anyway.

Lily let three seconds pass before wondering what was happening to her life and blowing a frustrated strand of hair from her face. "Petunia, is there any particular reason you're still here, or do you just fancy standing in my bedroom for the rest of the day? Because I'd love some privacy in getting ready."

Petunia scowled. "Breakfast is on the table." She offered, falteringly and after a moment's pause. Lily gave her half a second. She didn't leave.

"Really? That's all?" She asked. "What're you still doing here, then?" Petunia's eyes flickered to her desk for the sixteenth time. "_What is it?_" She asked exasperatedly and a tad forcefully.

Petunia opened and closed her mouth twice, clearly having something chewing at her she was absolutely loathe to say. "What his _that_?" She finally cracked, making her gesturing to the Daily Prophet on her desk as curt and inconspicuous as possible. "And what's a _Muggle_? Wait, no-" She frowned. "I know what it is. That horrible Snape boy said it once – it's us regular, garden-variety people, isn't it?" Her tone of voice suggested an accusation, which was really unfair, in Lily's opinion.

And then it became so very horribly clear to Lily that her sister had not only rudely woken her up, but she'd also rudely been snooping on her things. Which made for a rude lingering in her bedroom that neither of them wanted.

She flew off the bed, snatched the paper and prayed to whoever was listening Petunia's prejudice had kept her from having read the story. "Nothing." She answered, trying to convey smoothness with her pyjamas askew and her hair a sure pillow-nightmare, while also pretending she wasn't hiding the newspaper she'd just grabbed from right in front of her sister's nose behind her back. She ignored the second question and the reference to Snape. "It's- freak stuff. Nothing for your nice, normal head to get stuck on." She cringed as Petunia bristled, but feigned obliviousness and kept going. "_Now_ can you go?"

Petunia wasted no more time and left in a hurry that she seemed to have been building up since she'd come in. Lily rubbed her face, felt the consequences of jumping out of bed when sleep wasn't a matter completely put to rest, and thought that at the very least Petunia would be too offended to think much about whatever she might or might not have read.

She flopped back on the bed, belly-up, and her eyes didn't close again, even though the ceiling wasn't that interesting.

James stayed away that day. She'd have liked to think it was because he was picking up on how murderous she was feeling toward him, but that would mean he had more insight over her thoughts than she wanted him to, so she didn't like it _too _much. Point was she saw neither head nor hide of any of the four nuisances, which was good. Very good.

Not disappointing at all that they were cleaning up to leave after lunch and she didn't hear from him. Or maybe it was, because, by the time Lily was helping her mother with the dishes, she seemed to have noticed _something_ (even if she could never be completely sure that wasn't just Mum-radar). Even so, she could attribute it to worry – she was terrified, both that the Marauders would try something and their names would be next in the Prophet Petunia had seemed so keen on spying, and also that they'd do all that and do it without her.

She had mixed feelings about Potter's ideas – on the one hand, they were _Potter's _ideas, and on the other they were Potter's _ideas_. The worst of them were brilliant, she could afford to admit; it was just that the aftermath usually uncovered their recklessness. There was something pressing in her chest because he could get himself killed, and there was something screaming in her stomach that wanted a part of this, and she couldn't see how that would happen if she went on vacation for nearly a month. Which he didn't even know, and that was something else for her mind to get stuck on.

Petunia had claimed she was terribly busy with something she could only mumble about before locking her bedroom door. Her dad was taking the bags to the car (Lily could hear his timed complaints about the amount and the weight) and all that was really missing were those dishes. Those dirty dishes that she had her full attention focused on, since it hadn't occurred to her that she was seventeen and magic was a possibility.

"Lily," Her mother said for the umpteenth time, with an impressive show of a kind of patience Lily would never ever claim to have. That was one of the things she'd trust Potter and Black to back her on. "I think, for the sake of the plates you're nearly breaking, that _I _can take it from here."

"Sorry." She muttered, feeling properly abashed and handing her mother the plate she'd just knocked against the banister. Those things were deceptively resistant.

Her mother did not, in fact, 'take it from here'. The moment the plate was safely in her hands, she put it down, dried her hands, crossed her arms and assumed her _lets-have-a-talk _pose. Lily didn't leave the kitchen fast enough.

"Lily," She asked with a strained frown. "what's been going on with you lately?"

Lily was a little startled – she didn't think she was acting any different. Even if things were so very royally and completely messed up in so many ways. "What do you mean?" She asked slowly.

"You've been incredibly distracted ever since you came home – and before that I feared you'd be sending us a letter saying you were staying at school for the summer as well." She pointed out bluntly, sounding so upset Lily felt the beginnings of guilt stir in her stomach. Worse, she couldn't actually tell her that not coming home for the summer was impossible because she might need the excuse in the future. "I'm worried. Does it have anything to do with that boy that visits sometimes? Because it doesn't matter what he seems at first glance, if you don't want to see him here again-" She was getting agitated, so Lily decided to stop her imagination before it led her to dangerous places.

"No- No, it's not- It's not about Pot- James. _Really._" She added earnestly when her mother didn't seem convinced. "It's not."

"But you admit to there being _something_?" She pointed out, forcing Lily into a chair and sitting in front of her, kitchen duty forgotten.

Lily hesitated. She wasn't questioning whether she was going to tell her mother anything remotely resembling the truth. She was questioning, yes, what the best way to get out of interrogation was.

She didn't want to lie, especially not to her family. It left her feeling as if she couldn't trust them, which wasn't the truth, which just restarted another vicious cycle of the same. But she didn't want to find out what they'd do if _they _found out about the current state of the world that was now permanently and irrevocably her home – her place among equals, somewhere she fit in, and which someone was trying to destroy. And they wouldn't understand, because they were her parents, and her parents were supposed to _be_ home. And they were, to some extent. Except now she was a full-grown decision-making adult, which made it a little difficult to ignore the rather terrifying idea that she might actually have to go out there on her own and be expected to succeed with her own brain.

But didn't it always come a time where everyone had to grow up and let go and move on into the scary and the alone and the fending for themselves? This was her time, even if she knew her parents' opinion on what she was planning to do with it would probably be to lock her in a room and not let her come out, ever. The problem was that the whole point was for her to get out of that room in the first place.

"Lily, I-" Her mother sighed frustratedly, tapping her fingers against the table-top. "I just want to help with whatever it is. I'm not trying to push you, but ever since Easter you've been so- so _distant_, almost downright sad, and I just want to know why! If you tell me, I can help you with it!" She promised.

Lily's mother had great time-tracking abilities. It was probably a week before Easter that Hogsmeade had happened.

_Easter was going to be abnormally cold that year. Even though it was April, and it was raining buckets, they shouldn't be taking out scarves and woollen overcoats still. Nor, apparently, should they be going to Hogsmeade in that weather, but Lily was accused of being stubborn all the time._

_She tightened the coat, though it didn't seem to help much, and shuffled closer to Alice. Hogsmeade looked more than a little desolate, with all the rain and half-deserted streets, but Lily couldn't focus much on it. Right now all she wanted to think about was indoors, fire, light, and all those things she couldn't see outside in the cold._

_Thankfully, they weren't far from The Three Broomsticks, even if thinking about what they'd gone through to get there was sure to send Alice into hour long rants for at least a month - starting the moment they sat down at the table farthest from the door._

"_This is the last time I am letting myself be convinced by _any _of your brilliant ideas." She complained, un-gluing her drenched scarf from her neck. It looked splashy enough to milk at least two cups of water from it. "Look at this place! It's deserted!"_

_Actually, as Lily had very much noticed but refused to admit, it wasn't. There were four boys heartily laughing by the bar, and God forbid they approach either of them. She was in a bad mood already._

_And, between the six of them, they were not, by a long shot, the bravest students at Hogwarts – Rosmerta was by no means busy, but there was still a handful of more of their far less irritating classmates around. She figured Alice was exaggerating to make a point. Lily couldn't say she didn't deserve it a little._

"_Sorry." Lily said, properly abashed. "But in all fairness, it didn't really start looking like a storm until half the way here." She meekly pointed out. She'd have felt guiltier if Alice wasn't the one with the almost boyish short hair, while hers was looking like a particularly wet mop._

_Alice's scathing answer was cut off, because someone did end up joining them - _he_ wasn't, however, unwelcome, especially not to Alice. Frank slid into the seat beside her, put an arm around her shoulders and instantly mollified her far better than Lily would ever have been able to. "I did _not _think you two pretty girls would brave the road in this weather." He teased, grinning. "Are you stalking me? I'm flattered the rain didn't stop you, by the way." He added._

_Alice was blushing, but that could easily be passed off as the change in temperature when they came in. "No, Lily's the one doing the stalking. I was just dragged along. She's completely obsessed with Potter, and she thinks I haven't noticed he's here too."_

_Lily made a face as they snickered. "It's like I can hear the universe blanching at that sentence. And, you know, I _am _a Gryffindor. I'm made for braving things." She said amusedly._

"_Not flying." Alice corrected._

"_Or dates with James Potter." Frank added._

_Lily shrugged. "Everybody's got their weaknesses."_

_Alice smiled, and Lily decided that the catastrophe was postponed, if not averted. Now all they had to do was have their butterbeers and leave before the Marauders noticed her. Rosmerta came by and took their order before Lily had had much to worry about. Alice chattered enthusiastically to her boyfriend while he played with her hair in an attempt to pretend to be paying attention._

_Lily zoned out – she was feeling a little bit like a third wheel, like she usually did whenever Frank was around. Fortunately, she was still feeling guilty enough not to feel bad about it. Thank God she actually liked him too, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to stand hanging out with the two of them._

_Until, of course, she realized who Frank was there in the first place with._

"_Lily!" He sounded delighted. Why would he possibly sound delighted? It was incompatible with her mood. She groaned, loudly. She hoped he got the message._

_He didn't. He dropped to the seat right next to her, and to make matters better, Black took the one on her other side with a grin. She scooted forward when Potter put an arm on the back of her chair and Alice used a hand to cover her giggles. Frank had no such qualms._

"_Hello, Remus, Peter." She smiled, even if a little forcibly, at the only two she could think to address right then._

"_Oi! I'm feeling really unloved right now, I am." Black said loudly, and Remus rolled his eyes, smiling back at her and taking a seat by Frank._

_Peter seemed unsure of how to proceed. He kept glancing between Remus and Potter's general direction, though she refused to look and confirm his exact position (it was a power thing). It looked terrifying._

"_Good thing she doesn't love you, then." Potter snickered. Lily was torn between the desire to ignore him and the one to laugh at his face._

"_You know, she's pretending you don't exist too." Black played along. She took their advice to heart and did just that. Or kept at it, anyway._

"_You'd wonder why, but you're you and she's known that for almost six years now." Remus (there was a reason she liked Remus) pointed out and everyone but Potter laughed._

"_That's right!" He said enthusiastically instead. "It's been six years since you insulted me for the first time!" He poked at her side and she could hear the smirk in his voice – and yet she had trouble not smiling at that, it was so ridiculous. She compromised in the end by letting her lips twitch and not retaliate for him touching her._

_But Alice wasn't as courteous. Lily wondered how she could ever have thought she wouldn't get back at her. "Oh, she likes it, you know." She reassured Potter, who was instantly looking extremely interested. "That's why she came here. She missed her chance to do it at breakfast."_

_Lily rolled her eyes. "That was your fault, by the way. I know it's the weekend, but you'd want to get up before you have to go to sleep again, no?" Alice showed Lily her tongue, but since she was clearly not all that passionate about being mad at her, Lily just grinned back._

"_Why would you ever want to get up at all?" Black piped in, and either he was a better actor than Lily gave him credit for or he actually meant it._

"_To have breakfast." Frank said quite seriously. "I'm pretty sure you haven't ever woken up early enough to have tried Hogwarts' bacon, or you wouldn't ask that kind of questions."_

"I_'m pretty sure Black hasn't ever woken up early enough to arrive in time to _first period_." Lily mumbled. Alice and, surprisingly, Potter both snorted, but no one else seemed to have heard it._

_Rosmerta arrived with all their drinks, including (somehow) for the four unwanted extras. Well, only two of them were actually unwanted (at least by her), but the only time they weren't all attached at the hip was when their parents, a teacher or, more efficiently and quickly, a girl, surgically separated them, and then they quickly glued themselves back together._

_They stayed for a lot longer than Lily would have thought would be comfortable, but then she remembered she was the only one with an actual grudge-creating problem with Potter. They were, as she reluctantly knew, remarkably easy personalities to be with (their table seemed to attract a lot of stares; an almost obnoxiously loud bunch of teenagers in a magical hotspot of a pub was out-of-place), and she ended up withdrawing from the conversation more than she normally would have._

_Eventually, Remus, who seemed to do the same in bigger groups, struck up a normal, polite, quieter conversation about their Prefect duties that, as always, made her silently awe at how he got along with Potter and Black's naturally explosive personas. She'd asked him about it, once during a Potion's lesson (on Verisaterum), in a bout of brutal honestly that she hadn't a clue to where it'd come from. He'd smiled, said they made life interesting, and clammed up._

_After that, she'd privately stayed with the notion that Remus was a closet-case adrenaline junkie, but not all the truth serum in the world would make that come out of her lips._

_The general conversation did, in due course as it was proper for a group of seventeen-year-olds, turn to Quidditch. Potter and Black took this as an opportunity to increase the noise-level, which made nice, normal, polite, quieter conversations become impossible. Remus sighed at the same time she rolled her eyes, and they joined the rest of them in listening, once again, to the story of Gryffindor's unbeatable Seeker's perfectly executed Wronski Feint, and which was the feat largely responsible for his getting into Puddlemere United straight out of school._

"_You know," Lily said, drily, once he was done. "if your fascination with broken necks is that great, all you had to do was tell me. I'd be more than happy to handle yours without broomsticks." She was teasing, and she knew he knew that, though when, exactly, she'd begun feeling comfortable teasing James Potter wasn't very clear in her mind._

_He grinned at her deliciously. "You're welcome to do anything you want to my neck; or any other part of me, as matter of fact." He said earnestly, and Black pressed his lips together very tightly._

"_Thank God I know a _lot _of vanishing spells and charms, then. Very inventive ones, too." Potter winced and she considered it a win._

_She noticed Peter, who was looking as though he'd been dropped from the sky in the middle of a population of a different species. "So, Peter," She said, because ignoring James was still easier than quipping at him. "I thought you'd gone home for the Easter holidays?" She would have smiled at him, but the startled way his watery eyes looked at her disconcerted her. Still, she could _feel _Potter scowling and bristling, so it was all worth it._

"_Y-yes, I was. I mea- I mean, I was supposed to, only my mother had to go on- on a short-notice trip." He stuttered awkwardly. She realized she should have gone with Remus again. Conversations with him were a lot more stimulating, and sometimes she could actually count on him to help her annoy Potter. Of course, later he'd decide to very deliberately ask her uncomfortable questions with a grin about why she needed to annoy Potter so, which wasn't as much fun, but at least those never got to Potter's ears. She hoped, anyway._

"_Oh." She answered politely. Peter reddened._

_Frank and Alice were talking to each in whispers other very close and with too much giggling involved (at least on Alice's part). Her friend's cheeks were getting progressively more coloured, and Lily decided that if the two of them weren't leaving soon, everyone else would._

_That was when half the bar exploded._

_Lily wasn't proud to admit that – back then – their reaction times weren't mind-blowing. For a moment that either stretched too long or not long enough, they just stared: stared at a wall that wasn't there anymore, stared at Rosmerta's crumpled and unconscious form that had really not Apparated to the other side of the bar from where she'd been initially, and stared at five figures with faces ridiculously recognisable from at least three years of (not particularly peaceful) sharing of a castle, staring in the middle of the crater they were responsible for like some sort of twisted eye of a storm, only it wasn't safer inside than outside._

_Then they threw the first curse, and Lily ducked, and that's the last she remembered seeing of her friends for a while._

_This wasn't the first time she'd been in the crossfire of a duel – but calling what went on inside Hogwarts' walls between the Marauders and Slytherin's finest duelling was a stretch. Calling this a duel was a stretch too, mostly because it almost seemed like a group of _God-don't-make-her-call-former-classmates-of-hers-Death-Eaters _deciding The Three Broomsticks (or its occupants – it was probably more about the occupants) didn't go with the landscape and doing something about it._

_From harmless (though sometimes barely tethering on the edge of that definition) and sporadic beams of light, _controllable _spells, to a mess of no-see, no-hear, no nothing except screaming and white, and green and red and _God_, but those two didn't go together – and she was feeling out of her depth, out of her everything, she had control over nothing – the ceiling was falling, but it was in little pieces, little, tiny, miniscule, microscopic really, like flour, so that was okay, even if it would turn this into the most twisted cake in history, and seven kids not even in their last year at school would be the squished middle._

_Her first instinct wasn't cursing back. Then the table she was cowering under with several other someones (the squished screams were too close) disappeared and she had no choice._

_In that quiet moment, when the table was there and then not, there was moment of clarity, where the air was still and the proverbial sunray hit her (and the non-proverbial one too, the wall had really been blown to pieces). There was a very clear, bright fluorescent line separating school from reality. She learned about Unforgivables in DADA, but really, her imagination was rather off – the light beam was much thicker, and much brighter than she would expect for a bringer of death, she saw – she used _Protego _because it was a spell she was supposed to learn for class, but really it was funny how using it to protect herself from falling debris gave the syllabus a whole new meaning. Lily didn't know if this was because she was a Muggleborn and doing things without spells and magic and potions and anything else wasn't second nature to her – but suddenly she quite clearly realized that yes, her O at DADA was going to have to serve her._

_The first enchantment she used was the Shield Charm. She didn't stop there._

_She somehow ended up outside, her arm stinging briefly before becoming comfortably warm against the rain and cold. She was fairly certain she hadn't used the door either, but then again, there was a new convenient truck-shaped entrance now, wasn't there? She couldn't see anybody – except, that was, Bellatrix Lestrange, whom she found herself duelling._

_She daren't even try offense, because she'd have to have two seconds in-between dodging and blocking Bellatrix's spells to stop defence. She was terrified – was this it? Was this how she would die, pelted by raindrops, alone with a madwoman cackling against the wind, her whipping hair hardly an impediment for her true aim-_

_Bellatrix spoke, which scared her more than anything else that night. "And which one would you be, Red? Are you the _bitch_?" She laughed very dementedly, and in the sound Lily heard all the things one should never hear in a laugh, all this perverseness, and black, and pain Bellatrix enjoyed-_

_Lily didn't answer – even if she had wanted to, which she plainly hadn't, her mouth was too dry, her lungs too empty, her mind too blank – and instead focused on not getting hit with a red, maleficent-looking fireball sort of curse that she didn't want to imagine was the Cruciatus one. Bellatrix didn't play soft, which meant most of what she tried, Lily had to dodge – she didn't hope to find out the consequences of protecting herself with an invisible shield against the words Avada Kedavra that day._

_And then Lily tripped._

_It wasn't her fault – she'd been more preoccupied with her opponent than her where her heels where heading. Bellatrix had been forcing her backwards, for some reason (she fervently hoped never to find out what, because her nightmares for the next few weeks were already booked, and she didn't want them to have to extend over a period of months) and her pathetic attempts to repel her had culminated with her falling backwards over a relatively soft rock – she'd never known rocks could be soft, or have cloaks covering them and _oh God_, she shut her eyes and tried to imagine this person, this human, bodied person under her could not be dead, and tried to pretend she couldn't be dead in a few moment's notice too, because she was just standing there looking stupid and-_

_Something barked._

_It was a dog. A dog had barked, then had full-body-impacted Bellatrix Lestrange to the ground, literally howling mad, biting down with some serious force her wand-hand and Lily had never loved dogs more. Lily scrambled to her feet, listening to Bellatrix's shrieking curses and non-magic curses and not managing anything, because as far as anyone could see, the dog was clearly enjoying trying to wrestle the wand out of her hand – and then she remembered the body, the maybe-dead, no, maybe-alive body that was still under her._

_It was Peter. Lily didn't quite know what to do with herself, much less with him, and so her hands sort of hovered like useless rescue-copters that couldn't do much with the rescue at all. There it was: at long last, it hit her that this was a war and that, quite suddenly, they were smack right in the middle of it. There was her classmate, her friend, lying out cold on the ground, someone she had _classes _with, someone with whom she sat and listened to teachers droning on about their education (and what was that worth, in the middle of the street, in drenched hair, drenched clothes, waiting for a cold that wouldn't hit her skin yet, but which had frozen her insides already?), someone she'd watched picking his nose at thirteen! And now this, and he looked so peaceful - oblivious to this, oblivious to the screams, oblivious to Lily's livid inner turmoil, oblivious to everything except his dreams._

_Where was she, where boys who called themselves 'Marauders' lay on a deserted road because someone who convinced and manipulated and dark-charmed people away from right and wrong and morals and principles wanted a change that would make more boys like Peter end up right there with him? Why was she fighting his follower, how come she was fighting for her future life now, how come she had to fight for her life at all?_

_Peter wouldn't wake up. She blinked back the tears that weren't coming, blinked back the water that covered her whole face and looked – looked everywhere for somewhere safe where Peter could stay for all of five minutes. There was nowhere. She couldn't see a place where Peter would be safe. She couldn't see a place where she'd be safe either._

_The dog's howling had stopped, but Bellatrix's hadn't. Lily's wand was in her hand._

_Peter had gotten lucky so far – he'd just have to hope he'd get lucky a little bit longer. Cautiously, and with a dangerously trembling hand, she approached the dog and its prey, wand outstretched and ready to attack this time._

_The dog was quite beautiful – its night-colour hair was long and thick and lustrous, almost reminding her of Black's hair, even in the pouring rain. It had a longish snout, and its growling made its gums shake in rage. The eyes were narrowed to dark, glittering little beads. It looked big and powerful and scary, and Lily felt safer, for some reason, in its presence. At the very least, it wasn't paying attention to her, but to Bellatrix, and it wasn't the kind of attention Lily would want. It had her wand in its mouth, and it was dripping pink water, which was likely was a diluted version of what was running down Bellatrix's arm. She hadn't gotten up – both because the dog had made a nest out of her, and possibly because she didn't like her chances of outrunning it, just like Lily wouldn't._

_Lily pointed her wand directly at the witch's face, feeling a kind of inspired rage that only came from a sudden moment of clarity that instantly led to despair and misery, which made for the adrenaline-fueled bravery (of the reckless kind) that she was now feeling – at least her mind was not shattered now, because anger was very focusing, and very focused as well._

"_Call your- friends. Now." She ordered, quietly and very steadily, in spite of the rain, the fear and the pure and uncontrollable rage that were all making her whole body tremble._

_Bellatrix snorted._

_The dog growled a warning._

_Bellatrix smirked at her and didn't seem to care about her mutilated arm anymore. "I see now – vermin can't turn into other animals. Although I wouldn't have expected a mudblood not to be a bitch." She sneered at the dog. Lily was confused._

_And then the rain went too quiet. Too inconsequential._

_Lily couldn't say what it was, exactly. It was lots of different things. Bellatrix's unconcerned, almost giddy attitude, a feeling of horrible foreboding deep in her gut, the fact that there had been way too much calm in the last ten minutes, a sudden dreadful silence behind her, the dog's shudder and cowering and whimpering and the sound of a boot just kicking aside a body – _Peter_ – carelessly. It all amounted to Lily turning around and wishing for a quick death._

_Lord Voldemort was walking toward a wandless woman, a dog lying on top of her, and Lily. Lily had a wand. It had never seemed more like a helpless wooden stick, much like herself. Or at least her best impression of one._

_Up until then, Voldemort had been a misty phantom on the edge of her awareness – something foul, shapeless, shadowy, barely real. It was there but not really. Now he _was_ right there, looking straight at her, with red-blood eyes that saw more than she wanted him to see, and thinning hair that made him look a little human – too human-_

"_A mudblood. And you thought it wise to fight my Bella?" He said this musingly and too low for her to plausibly hear over the raindrops, and quite suddenly she realized she couldn't hear much of anything else – she opened her mouth to scream-_

_And there was a great loud bark and the dog was there, standing in front of her like some sort of laughable invisible barrier – Voldemort looked away from her, tore that humanly inhumane vision from her direct line of sight and she felt as though she finally had permission to collapse to the ground. She could hear Bellatrix Lestrange cackling in anticipation – Voldemort raised his wand - the dog would go first-_

"No!_" Someone shouted – and she realized that it had been two voices as one, and half had been hers._

_Potter showed up out of nowhere, wand in hand and running so fast he was practically sliding down the diminished version of a river that had formed in Hogsmeade's main street. And, because it was Potter, Lily understood immediately that he was about to do something so incredibly reckless it could only be brave and so stupid it could only have been Gryffindor (as a footnote, she was the one with her bottom on the freezing and wet asphalt, with a dog protecting her from the Wizarding World latest nightmare), like raising an admittedly convulsing wand to Voldemort's chest._

_Bellatrix's gasp was incredulous and maniacally hysterical, and Lily's was livid. The dog seemed to agree, because it started howling and nudging James' leg – but he wasn't listening, he just kept very still like a statue with a wand trained on Lord Voldemort._

_And Voldemort raised his eyebrows. "You seemed to have run into the wrong group of schoolchildren, Bella. Obviously, these seven – they are the ones who will finally overthrow me." His voice carried the s's so well Lily felt them whisper down her spine and make her shake and shiver and increase her terror._

_Bella's laughter rang cold and out-of-place among the silent witnesses. "Such a pity, to spill pure blood. I have no reason to mean you any harm, boy." He told James, whose stiffening back told her, even if not him, that not being on Voldemort's hit list was insulting._

"_Don't you worry about that." He said, perfectly cheerfully. But Lily knew him, knew his tones of voice, knew when he was nervous, jittery, terrified or livid, and knew when he was far beyond any of those. "It'll be no trouble, giving you one."_

_And he threw the first curse._

_The way Voldemort handled it was funny, in a twisted, Lily's-been-exposed-to-Bellatrix-too-long way, waving his wand almost as if he was bored, like ladies used to handle those old handkerchiefs they kept in their cuffs. Lily never found out which one it had been - by then James was already running, running and almost making her take off, but at least her hand was securely in his and that dog, he was dogging their steps (James', anyway, because hers were mostly drag-marks) – and she couldn't find the time or the breath or the pause to tell him _no, no, no, Peter's still back there with the madman and the madwoman!_ But then another part of her just kept thinking _not fast enough. _Voldemort wasn't cursing – likely, it was the only reason they were still alive – and, somehow, impossibly, she found herself right next to James._

"_We can't keep running! It's just amusing him!"_

"_Jeez, Evans, way to cheer a bloke up." James snapped, but then their eyes met, and she found he was just as terrified as she was. "We don't have any cover – I can barely see anything in this rain!"_

"_Then _make _one!" She cried, and they flattened themselves as Voldemort unexpectedly stopped being amused._

_James waved his wand, face scrunched up against the rain and the curses and the difficulty of the charm and then they were right behind a huge, rocky, weirdly-shaped thing. And the dog, the weirdly ever-present dog, grumbled as if saying _about-time _and flopped straight to the floor, tongue out and looking more like Black than ever. Lily practically did the same against the rock, because James could run._

"_James-" She said urgently. "Peter – he was back there-" She was trying – she was trying really hard – but a sob escaped her. She buried her head in her hands, only she didn't want a head right then, she didn't want to think, didn't want to imagine poor Peter, just lying there unconscious, Voldemort and Bellatrix looming over him- how could she have just left him there?!_

_James was halfway out the security the rock offered before she noticed a thing, but the dog had quicker reflexes. It grabbed his leg and pulled him forcibly back, and for one, terrible moment, she thought it'd give him the same treatment it'd given Bellatrix – but then it'd let go, growled loudly and reproachfully at him and shot off into the rain, alone and smaller and more inconspicuous than any human – even if it seemed strangely aware…_

_No curses shot its way, and Lily was glad, because she was starting to like it._

_James watched it anxiously – Lily started to form the idea that maybe the dog was more than a dog, but the confusion was not worth the time it would waste. "Where's Remus?" He demanded, wildly looking for the answer as if it would be around him somewhere._

"_I don't know." She answered, and the terror built again, stretching as if a hand and enveloping her whole being into one giant mess of worry. Where _was _Remus? Or Alice? Or Frank, or Sirius? "You've lost him?"_

"_I've lost everyone!" He cried, and seemed to want to tug at his hair._

_Then Voldemort spoke._

"_You have plenty of dare, James Potter." Voldemort said, deadly and smooth like poison. His voice was loud and abnormal, distorted by spell or malice. "Devilish, if one may. Even if, in inopportune moments such as this, it can easily be mistaken for affronting recklessness. And loyalty – your furry friend, who just dragged the other one from here, it seems, is perfectly unscathed. Consider it a show of good faith. Useful qualities, I daresay. Touching ones. They've more than likely served _others _at some point._

"_And yet – what about you? Where are they? Those loyal friends – you're here, facing me, and I see but one mudblood by your side." Lily flinched and James' eyes were murderous behind the glasses._

"_You're a bright young man too. I saw what you just did to Mulciber – it's certainly- inventive, you'll allow me. I can help you, James. Can you imagine what you could do with unlimited possibilities - resources? Not those offered at Hogwarts – they barely, tamely skim the surface. You could do formidable things. You have potential. Don't you want to explore it?"_

_He answered his own question. "Join me, and you'll find real loyalty. _Royalty._" James looked incredulous now, but Voldemort seemed perfectly self-assured of the sentiment. "All those things you crave – I see them, all of them, deep down there, even _her_… You could have it all – you wouldn't have to do anything. You'd have the respect and that support, _unwavering_, of the Wizarding World. Think of all the things you could do – you'd be cleaning our world, purging it! Is there a nobler task? You are a Gryffindor, are you not?"_

_James had stood perfectly stoic through his words, and Lily had been perfectly content watching him, dying to know what went on in his head. For whatever reason, she was aware that Voldemort had touched a few right buttons – more than a few wrong ones too – and she knew that _there was no way, _and that Voldemort knew less of loyalty than the average Slytherin, which his big talk showed, and yet, and yet… And now, listening to the silence, she almost wished Voldemort's voice back. Then James nodded, gave her a jittery sort of look, the kind of look she'd come to associate to late-night findings of him where he wasn't supposed to be (when he wasn't supposed to be), put one arm around the rock – his wand arm – and fired an indistinguishable spell with indistinguishable words._

_A cool, female and impersonal voice began reciting, in deadpan, "__If your blood is indeed the purest of the purest, please contact St. Mungo's immediately – you may be missing vital components from it, important to your life. A lot of respected and important members of our community have perished due to this terrible, non-contagious disease that seems to be spreading more quickly than the birthrate of pureblood babies. Please, help us help you."_

_There was a beat of silence. Then Bellatrix Lestrange began screaming bloody murder in a string of profanities._

_Lily wanted to be having a nightmare. Potter seemed to be feeling perfectly pleased with himself, but she was afraid the rock they were hiding behind was going to have a very explosive ending, and they were going along with it._

"_Sorry." He whispered. She peeked between her fingers to let him take a good long glance at the look on her face. "I just wanted to say something as ridiculous as he did back."_

"_If that is your answer-" Voldemort sighed, as though regretting the bother it would be, killing James. "It's a pity, James Potter. We will meet again. And I will not be so friendly then." Voldemort's snake-like voice whispered all the way to them, heard even above Bellatrix's screams of outrage – and then there was a Disapparating _pop _and Lily knew they were gone._

_It was over. And it'd begun at last._


	4. Pomfrey and The Order The of Phoenix

_She went by the rest of the day in a sort of haze. James made to disappear with the rock, but Lily tensely grabbed his arm and shook her head. Maybe she was tethering on the edge of insanity – she hoped never to meet who wouldn't, after this – but she didn't feel safe. Not yet. She didn't realize that feeling would be a permanent part of her from then on, all the way to her grave, until much later._

_The bar was full of unconscious people (she didn't dwell around for very long), and Lily found out that the Death Eaters, whose presence was now marked only by the trail of destruction their storm had left behind, had, for some reason, wanted their fun with the seven of them specifically. Anyone without pieces of stone or wood or glass about them had decided to stay alive and had bolted, but Lily couldn't remember having time to think safety=away=run between flashes of red and green and white. They weren't going anywhere, anyway, so the thought occurred to her that there were scattered pieces of their impromptu initial congregation outside (her first thought wasn't to get a figure of authority but rather to become one, and it didn't cross her mind why that was). The rain, somehow only a dribble now, was reduced to an almost welcome, constant presence._

_Remus was standing, or rather, half balancing himself, half balancing what appeared to be the floor and was actually the sky, even though he was on the edge of the woods in the grass and the trees had him perfectly covered, and James let him collapse practically all over him – he'd dealt with the Lestrange brothers all on his own. Lily was both horrified and not allowed to help, because, as it turned out, she hadn't been quite as good with Bellatrix as she'd have thought, and there was a large gash on her shoulder that instantly began hurting her when she noticed it to prove it._

"_They vanished a second ago, I think." He said dazedly, tripping on his ankles, and Lily didn't want to find out how that could actually be done. "With this large _POP_!" He said it quite loudly, which made James jump in an unbalanced manner and end up on the floor entangled with him. Remus wasn't much help getting up, but it lifted her mood partially._

_They found Alice tearfully crouched over Frank, wand in hand, and she cried in relief when she saw them. They were closest to the pub because Frank had been hit with a fair bit of ceiling – and then Avery had shown up, and that's how Alice had gotten a nice long gash that ran all the way from her temple to her chin, and _that's _how Lily let go of the idea of being a Healer._

_Lily used her good side to help Alice with Frank, but it was clear two injured girls alone weren't going to last long._

_Then the people showed up, and that was no longer a problem. What was, however, was that they didn't seem to have thought prudent to check on anyone that might have been in the bar while spells and curses were flying along, but after they were very worried. Rosmerta was immediately taken to the Hospital Wing, which seemed the closest and the brightest idea. Frank and Remus followed, and when James and Lily went after the final members of their party, they found Peter up and about, blushingly stuttering about tripping and hitting his head, and Sirius staring at him incredulously, wondering whether it was proper to laugh at that point._

_Lily looked around – she saw no flash of black or fur or dog. "Where were you the whole time?" She asked Sirius. "And where's that dog that went after Peter?"_

"_Erm-" Sirius seemed to think long and hard about that question. "Fighting- someone. And- I don't know. Ran off." He shrugged at the look she gave him. "Eh, you know Death Eaters, they all look alike."_

"_You're a horrible liar." She said in surprise. "I didn't expect that."_

_James snorted, looking too exhausted for more, Sirius sputtered and Peter trailed behind them rubbing his head. Lily didn't get any more answers from any of them._

_It was two hours before they were in the Hospital Wing, waiting until Madam Pomfrey would let them see their friends. Lily saw them sooner than the others, because her shoulder was noticed and James made sure to say that she'd stumbled more often than she walked a straight line and that she'd lost a lot of blood. None of that was true, but she ended up being marched inside along with Peter and directed to Remus' bed – trying extremely hard to pretend Madam Pomfrey was no busier than usual, though she seemed to have run out of beds – which relaxed her only marginally. Peter's problem was apparently not as serious, as he was sent to the back where Madam Pomfrey didn't go often._

"_Frank's still out." Remus offered as soon as she sat down at his feet – probably because the first thing he'd done was ask questions too. "But Rosmerta's up, about, and questioning everyone about the state of The Three Broomsticks. Alice's cut was not dark magic, so she's fixed up and sneaking around Pomfrey to stay by Frank's bed."_

_Lily relaxed a little. "That's good." She murmured, smiling hesitantly. "You seem better?"_

_Remus nodded. "I have no idea what I was hit with, but Madam Pomfrey seemed to have. She cleared it up and forced me to stay, but had no time to explain anything."_

"_Well, Mr. Lupin, the half of the bar's occupants that didn't decide to run off or _fight Death Eaters on their own _are also here, and though they aren't very many, they've all been hit by pieces of flying wall or falling ceiling. I believe chats over tea are something that will happen tomorrow at the earliest." Remus looked properly ashamed as Madam Pomfrey materialized (figuratively) right next to them. Lily winced as she began prodding at her wound with a dark scowl on her face._

"_But I can tell you that you've been hit with a Gemino curse-"_

_Lily gaped. "A Ge- on a_ human_?" Remus looked uncomfortable at that, and Madam Pomfrey readjusted Lily's arm. She noticed that the charms to close a simple cut were taking a fair bit longer than what was usual for the Healer._

"_Yes – very odd, and I don't particularly believe it was deliberate, because in a duel it would be too slow-acting to be of any use. It acted essentially on your cells, , like a Muggle deathly illness called cancer. It wouldn't have given you half a day. You're lucky you did not take long getting here." The look on her face intensified, and she looked up from her shoulder briefly to show it. "And do try not to move around an awful lot, won't you, Miss Evans?"_

_The glare she spared was, however, preferable to the concern that suddenly replaced it. "What?" Lily asked, alarmed._

"_This is the work of-" For some reason, she glanced at Remus, who looked as bemusedly concerned as her. "Well, a curse I've seen before. It's dark magic, and I've no time to deal with it now. It's not very serious." She reassured the stricken expression on Lily's face, and then turned apologetic. "I'm afraid it'll leave a scar – I have no dittany to spare as this is rather shallow, and it was not applied immediately anyway. I've stopped the bleeding and you'll stay overnight." This she said very sternly, as if she expected Lily to sneak out for five-o'clock tea if she wasn't impressed with the danger of whatever it was she was talking about. Lily thought it unfair that she judged all Gryffindors by the Marauders' behaviour just because those four were the ones visiting her most. Then she hurried off to attend to a fourteen year-old Lily remembered having seen near the blast site, and who was looking very pale._

"_Lily," Remus called urgently, and when she turned he didn't look bemused anymore, but like someone who'd just had a horrible thought. "may I see your shoulder?"_

_Lily blinked at his odd request, but she showed it to him nonetheless, if a little self-consciously, because of the look he was sporting. He looked at it for two seconds, and then he swore, and Lily, who'd never seen him do such a thing, jumped a little. "Who hit you with this?" He demanded._

"_Er- Bellatrix. Lestrange, Bellatrix Lestrange. Why?" But the colour was draining from Remus' face and before she had time to be alarmed, he had jumped up and walked out the door._

_It didn't take long – Madam Pomfrey surely had a sixth sense for these things – and the matron was dragging him furiously back, lecturing him on wasting time she didn't have. Just when Remus dropped back into bed still with an anxious expression, the teachers arrived._

_McGonagall, Sprout, Slughorn and Flitwick realized quickly there was hardly anybody who could tell them anything useful – right up until Dumbledore, silent so far, went straight to Peter and the latter rattled off the seven names that were to be, as Madam Pomfrey was told, brought to the Headmaster's office as soon as the confusion died down. Lily couldn't blame him, because she could hardly hear herself among the cries and the orders._

_When Madam Pomfrey realized that they were doing nothing more than taking up space, she kicked them all out, except for Sprout and Flitwick, who, like McGonagall, were perfectly willing to lend a hand, but who, unlike McGonagall, hadn't been demanded by duty as Deputy Headmistress and not a Head of House. She'd been assigned to press duty, which she grit her teeth at, dragging Slughorn along to share her misery, while Dumbledore was on damage control, both with the Ministry and the village. Anyone else would, Lily could see, only get in the way. She almost felt bad, watching everyone bustling around with ten hands, and herself lying there looking like another task someone else had to complete._

"_Frank's up." Remus said suddenly, and Lily snapped around too fast for someone completely unaware of the previous presence of someone who'd just spoken – she'd never known herself to have such good reflexes._

_Frank was, indeed, up, and the worst injury he appeared to have was a nasty hit to the head, which Flitwick seemed to waste no time in deeming treated – he was just telling him he was fine to leave when Madam Pomfrey noticed the atrocity and told the short teacher off for clearing a student who'd been unconscious and could have been hit with all manner of curses and charms (it hadn't seemed to cross her mind that Flitwick was the Charms professor). That was when Frank joined Lily and Remus, because apparently Madam Pomfrey had a system. Alice trailed behind. He too sat on Remus' bed, because they had to free as many as they could._

_For the reminder of the day, all they did was stiffly discuss what had happened in Hogsmeade – and Lily only opened her mouth to let out a strangled gasp when Alice, of all people, mentioned Voldemort. "I screamed, Frank cursed, You-Know-Who sent whatever the hell it was I don't want to know about at us and we both _stumbled _back to the pub. That's when the wall beside us caved in and I couldn't see anything or hear him-"_

_Alice's eyes were filling with tears, and Frank rubbed her arm comfortingly. "It was weird." He added, trying to appear nonchalant but bobbing his Adam's apple. "He was so-"_

"_Human-looking?" Lily winced._

_Everybody looked at her in alarm, and she pulled her knees to her chest. "Wanna share?" Alice ordered._

"_I think he took a shine to James." She answered truthfully, and Remus went very white. Lily had an inkling _something _was up in his head, but he didn't look willing to share._

_And so Lily told them – Remus' frown kept getting darker in contrast to his complexion getting whiter, Alice looked faint enough to be sick and Frank was gripping both his girlfriend and the sheets he was holding on to too tightly. Lily did, however, somehow manage to cheer Remus up a little by talking about the large black dog that had mysteriously disappeared after their exploits._

_There they stayed while the sun set the same way as yesterday - and, strangely, to Lily, far more fascinating - not daring enough to ask permission to leave. Madam Pomfrey, grudgingly forced to let go students who'd suffered cuts to mild concussions with only strict instructions, ushered Frank, Alice and Peter out the door. Then it was just Remus and Lily and their quietening roommates as the Hospital Wing emptied._

_She filled the space and the time with idle chatter. There were a number of things she was itching to ask, but something held her back. Remus was a far cry from being her best friend, and though she trusted him implicitly, she also knew to rarely expect honesty from him when it came to suspicious or weird things happening around his friends, or himself. She was about to ask about something she hadn't thought of yet when there was a sudden rush of warm air down her neck. She couldn't help it – she was jittery – and just barely refrained from making any noise above a squeal, jumping a foot in the air. Then she turned around and there was nothing there._

"_Do you mind not calling attention to us?" Remus snapped in an angry whisper. Lily, indignant, turned in shock to Remus – and realized he was looking past her, to a trio of grinning miscreants who had not been there before._

"_James!" She huffed. "What- humphf!" He had a hand on her lips now, and his face was too close, because she could distinguish the brown from the flecks of gold in his eyes behind the lenses, and she discovered he wasn't smirking anymore._

_She snapped out of it when her eyes focused on Black and Peter, who didn't look nearly as distracting. _

_Before she could start insulting people or maybe pulling out her wand, Remus stood and closed the curtains of the now cramped space, taking advantage of Madam Pomfrey's turned back. He opened his mouth, but then Lily spotted something rather interesting in Potter's other hand, and instantly she figured explanations were unnecessary. "You're a fine lot of lunatics, you know that?" She said through her teeth, feeling the texture of the fabric of an invisibility cloak, which James was holding the way anyone else would hold a coat. "This is _rare_. How would you possibly have gotten it? And whose clever idea was it to breathe down my neck?" She was feeling her face burning, which only made her more murderous. Where was her wand?_

"_How about we leave the jinxing for when Pomfrey won't come see what it's about?" Remus asked pleasantly, stretching his hand in a clear offering of the wand that was _hers _and _he was holding_, though keeping it far enough away for it to be a warning._

_She took it and very nearly growled at him. "Why did you sneak in here?" She tried again, more calmly._

"_Well, we thought about knocking and swaggering inside, even coming in here yelling, but then we remembered Madam Pomfrey's used to people barrelling through the door and we wanted to be different." Sirius said._

"_How about asking to come see your friend? _Nicely_?" Lily suggested._

_James shook his head. "No, we couldn't do that. Can you imagine McGonagall's reaction if we started acting reasonable and polite and mature? We like her, we wouldn't do such a thing to her."_

_Sirius grinned, plopping down beside her. "Besides, deep down – deep, _deep_ down – she's very fond of us and our antics, and we aim to please."_

"_I can't believe you went outside before to tell your mates to sneak into an understandably out-of-bounds place at night. Under an invisibility cloak that explains _so _much of the last few years of my life, with origins I likely don't want to know about." She grumbled. "Honestly, I'd expect this from _them_, not you!" Remus had the decency to look abashed._

_James, on the other hand, looked insulted. "I'll have you know," He said, pompously. "that 'tis a family heirloom. Belonged to my father, my father's father before that, my-"_

"_I get the picture." She interrupted, and then frowned, because something didn't quite add up. "Wait – an invisibility cloak that lasts for multiple generations?" She sighed, annoyed. "Must you always exaggerate your point?"_

_James seemed surprised at that. "I'm not. My grandfather gave me a few wicked ideas for what to do with it my first couple of years here, actually. Why's that so weird?"_

_But Lily was glancing from the mystical cloak to Remus, because surely if he knew about it as he so obviously did, this had to have crossed his mind at some point. And yet Remus was nodding along with her, looking like the thought had just hit him for the first time too. "Because she's right, James." He said, plucking it out of his hands and examining it. "It was what Professor Madison talked about, class before last, matter of fact. Invisibility cloaks aren't infallible, nor certainly forever, that's what she said, remember? Your cloak came to mind, but I never- I mean, I just thought of it as a whole different level, or something."_

_Sirius, who'd started looking bored and was now eying the window as if wondering how he could turn it into a source of amusement, barked out a laugh. "Nice save. It's okay, we all know you only pretend to pay attention in class, Moony." Remus aimed his pillow at him._

_James shrugged, and though there was a new interest in his eyes when they landed on the cloak, it was still the same faithful instrument he'd used to get some serious pranks going. He shoved it aside so he could sit too, which scandalized Lily. "I guess my cloak is just _the_ Invisibility Cloak. And by that I mean that it's really only as good as its owner."_

"_Yes, thank you, James, but I didn't ask you here to give your self-aggrandizing a hand." Remus said drily with a hint of annoyance. Lily couldn't keep up with him. Sometimes he went along with the other two's jokes, sometimes he nipped them at the bud – then again, they didn't exactly have all the time in the world. He proved her theory when he began promptly and rather bluntly. "Lily said Voldemort was interested in you."_

_James stiffened and Sirius pursed his lips and let his back hit the mattress. "I've come up with a theory about that." Sirius announced lightly. "Voldemort's realized, before you did yourself, Prongs' inner sadistic git potential, and he wants in on the action before anybody else catches on to it."_

"_Don't joke about those things." Lily ordered gloomily. "It's bad enough that somewhere else, to some_one _else, it might actually be true."_

_Peter had been standing right in front of the rather violent light on the wall by the bed – she'd had the uncomfortable suspicion that he'd stared at her accusatorily, like she was somehow taking his place, though that was maybe her imagination, and a little guilty at the little truth nugget that promised her she was hanging around the Marauders a little too easily - looking like a huge formless shadow looming over them, so it startled Lily when he suddenly spoke timidly and squeakily. "I don't understand, though. What even made V- Vo- V- You-Know-Who aware of Pr- James?" He paused, and Lily imagined his flickering gaze jump, jittery, for one boy to the other next to her. "Assuming he's the reason V- You-Know-Who was in Hogsmeade in the first place, which I also don't understand."_

_Lily unexpectedly saw, quite clearly, why Peter was part of the most popular group of boys at school. "Blimey, Wormy." Sirius said in surprise, sitting up again. "Trust you to point out the obvious. Did Voldemort really come here just because of Prongs?"_

_For some reason, that sounded horribly wrong to Lily, and she figured out why a second later, when James snapped his head between the lot off them so fast she almost didn't see his gritted teeth. "Are you saying The Three Broomsticks was blown apart on my account?"_

"_Hey," Lily protested. "let's not get ahead of ourselves. No one said that. No one knows if that's why V- he was here, anyway." She had felt very brave indeed, when spells and uneven broken bits of bar were showering all around her, but now saying Voldemort's name was looking like quite a reckless endeavour, and she'd had enough of those for the day. "Besides, I find that highly doubtful. James is a Gryffindor through and through, right down to the pride thing. I don't even see why he'd know you exist in the first place." James seemed to puff up at this, and Lily wondered at the ease with which boys went through feelings._

"_And even if he was here for James, which still doesn't make sense-" Sirius added, leaving the jokes aside for a moment. "How would he know he'd be at the Three Broomsticks?"_

"_I don't know." Remus answered, upset, frustrated – except the frustration seemed a little forced, and Lily barely saw it, and she didn't know how the people who knew him best in the world didn't too. And then she saw James averting his eyes and thought that maybe the people who knew him best in the world didn't want to know._

"_And why did Voldemort leave all of a sudden, right after James blatantly insulted him?"_

"_I don't know." Lily could feel Remus' edginess setting in. But he knew, he knew _something_, and he wasn't sharing._

"_Do you much of anything at all, Moony?" Sirius grinned at him, because it was clear that this repetitive answer was souring Remus._

"_Yes, as a matter of fact." Remus answered crisply and instantly. "I know how to blackmail someone I've shared a dorm with for the last six years, for instance."_

"_Anyway," James, who was looking mollified, interrupted loudly. "Sounds like we have a whole lot of questions and no sense to make of them. I'm not joining him, and the worst harm that was done today was Peter falling on his head and knocking himself out." He said firmly, in a sort of final tone of voice that left them with virtually little to talk about. "So does it even matter?"_

_There was a pause, and James narrowed his eyes, daring anyone to disagree._

"_I guess not." Lily said finally, and with a start she realized she was acting civil, almost companionably, toward Ja- Potter. Producing a rock out of thin air must have been quite a bonding experience._

"_Yes." Remus said too, a second later. "It's probably nothing."_

_And the _probably_ hung in the air and somehow, without any of them verbalizing it, it was distorted and became _certainly_, and the _nothing_ lost its meaning to its opposite and became _something_. They didn't speak of it again._

"_Okay, so that's that." Sirius said, forcing a smirk. "Now, I heard Lily met a most brave, wonderful, handsome, adorable dog, and I would like to hear all_ _about it." Now his smirk wasn't fake, and he looked at Lily in a very earnest look that begged in puppy-speak. "Go on, I've just been dying to hear this."_

_She stared at him some, certain she was being set up for something, and yet just as sure that she'd never find out what it was (unless she did something about it). It was almost the way he'd usually speak of himself. James was trying to pretend to be having a coughing fit and Remus was pointedly looking down. Peter, who hadn't spoken in a while (or at all), was the most telling, however – he was gnawing on his nails, looking distinctly nervous, a little bit entertained, and yet somewhat tentatively expectant. He had come out of the darkness, and now he was just sitting on the floor, looking up at all of them wide-eyedly._

"_His?" She asked, deflecting with a raised eyebrow. "You call animals 'he' or 'she'? Besides, how do you know it wasn't a female?" She asked, defensively, focusing on details to delay anything that came after._

_There was a pregnant pause, and then James roared in laughter. She instinctively smiled, because even Remus was reddening, Peter was hiccupping, and Sirius looked offended, so she figured that, without knowing how, she'd turned the spell back onto him._

"_We've never really been sure." James gasped, pausing the hysteria for all of three seconds. "It's a problem, not knowing whether it's safe to undress in front of him." And then they were off in another fit, and James nearly fell off the bed, but now Sirius was laughing too. She seemed to be the only one not in on the joke._

_Only it was a weird joke, mixing Sirius and the dog as one and the same. And then quite suddenly it wasn't a joke at all, because she remembered the Marauders and the School Term of Peace, when they hadn't done a single, little, tiny prank, before previous year's Easter, which seemed to have left them particularly worked up for the rest of the year. And then she remembered the hours, the impossible hours, that they had spent at the library looking at all kinds of books on Transfiguration (while they'd not been particularly terrible at it before, afterwards, they never faltered in their Transfiguration O's, and even Peter seemed to get an E with ease) – on animal transfiguration – on Animagi-_

"_You-!" She gasped, suddenly quite out of words._

_Sirius, who had stopped his fit, turned to her with a lazy grin and a glint in his eyes. "I?" He mocked._

"_You didn't!" She couldn't, for the life of her, be eloquent right then. She just kept staring at them all, Remus' anxious face (he was the worrier of the four, she knew), James' wolfish smile- "You _didn't_!"_

"_I didn't- what?" Sirius taunted, looking extremely pleased with himself. "Because, honestly, even if it's not that much, there's still quite a bit of stuff we haven't tried-"_

_She glared with all her anger at him right then. "Become illegal _Animagus_, you didn't!"_

_James was suddenly right there, hushing her and looking over his shoulder. "Yell it for the whole world to hear, why don't you?"_

_The confirmation was even worse than the idea she'd formed in her mind. She'd been fully prepared to be laughed at for the ridiculousness of the idea and be relieved at it. "You-" She sputtered again. "Do you even realize- That's the stupidest, most reckless, idiotic, pig-headed, dangerous-" She ran out of adjectives. "thing you've ever _done_!" She rounded on Remus, who was already cowering away as the others tried to contain their snickers. "What _possessed _you to _let _him?!"_

"_Remus didn't know, though." Peter piped up helpfully. "We did it all behind his back."_

_She turned to him, and he looked scared enough at that to clamp a hand over his mouth. "You- Wait, _we_?" She asked, becoming very still. "You- You all-"_

"_Not Moony." Potter interjected, looking fairly pleased with himself. "Didn't you just hear Wormy, Evans? He had no clue." He grinned at her, and she wanted to throw something at his face, _break _his glasses, he was such a moron._

"_Are you out of your minds?!" It took her a full day of being in this company, and already she knew about flawless invisibility cloaks and was involved in obscure works of magic. "It's _illegal_! I _know _for a fact you're not registered!" And they still looked unconcerned, and Lily only felt her indignation rise at that. "I shouldn't even _need _another argument!"_

_A pause – then: "_How did you do it?_"_

_James didn't seem surprised, but Sirius recovered fast enough. They shrugged. "It took a while. We started working on it mid-third year, but we only managed last year. The final charms were the hardest. We got really drained at one point. Peter spent more time asleep during lessons than at night." Peter flushed._

_Sirius grinned. "Remus was so pleased - he thought we'd actually been putting our heads into our OWL year, because we were getting so sloppy with the jokes' scheming and all."_

_Remus scowled. "Forgive me for assuming you had any sense of responsibility."_

_Lily had nothing more to tell them. Whatever scolding she'd been aiming for, she'd told them the essential, and Remus had apparently done the rest. She shook her head. "You're mad. You have no idea of how the average human behaves, and you think imagination is limitless when it comes to making it a reality."_

"_It is." Sirius said happily. "That's what makes it so great." James high-fived him._

"_Ten-year-olds. That's what you lot are."_

_Remus wasn't scowling anymore, prompting her to put him in the same category as them – knowing things she never wanted to know apparently included realizing that Remus had to be behind some of the Marauders' most elaborate plans._

_She wasn't completely sure why she was so angry – it was scarcely her business. But wondering why was as far as her thoughts went, because she didn't want them going anywhere else._

_James shrugged, smiling. "You're still impressed." He teased. "And you've only seen Sirius yet. You haven't even seen me, and we all know who's superior."_

_And then, unexpectedly, a burning need to know what kind of animal James turned into - James and Peter turned into - came over her, only because James mentioned it. For some reason – partly because he was so smug already - she didn't ask._

"_Yeah," Sirius said sarcastically, perfectly unwilling to not be a participant in the contest of arrogance. "it sure was you, saving the day in your hoofs." Lily giggled, she couldn't help it – then she assumed back her extremely stern expression when Sirius looked at her, because sense and logic and responsibility demanded it, even if she was now more fascinated and impressed than irritated._

"_Hey!" James said indignantly. "At least I don't chase my own tail!" These were, Lily could clearly see from Remus' expression, jokes repeated a thousand times, and now a thousand and one for her benefit. "Besides, don't make it out to your innate bravery – _I _was the one who found your wand where you _dropped _it, remember?" James smugly pointed out._

"_Let me get this straight." Lily said incredulously. "You went around, fighting five Death Eaters and Voldemort, without a wand?"_

_Sirius waved his hand dismissively. "Danger gives me a thrill." She could have slapped him right then, she could have. "It wasn't my fault, anyway. It fell out of my pocket when there were bits and pieces of The Three Broomsticks raining over us. James found it, it's all good."_

"_Yeah." James replied drily. "That's why I went into a panic. I thought Rabastan had gotten you or something. Then I found you staring down Voldemort as an unarmed and rather ugly dog, and I thought 'well that's alright then', and I relaxed, obviously."_

_Sirius pretended not to laugh. "Yeah, well, point is – I lost it." He shrugged. "I figured I'd be more useful as a dog."_

"_God," Lily said, wide-eyed and disbelieving. "I really need to say you're always more useful as a dog, but that same dog saved my life!"_

_Sirius mock-scowled at her. "You're _welcome_, Evans."_

_Lily's lips trembled, and she pulled him into a hug, which seemed two parts horrifying and a part shocking to him. "Thank you." She said very quietly and very seriously, pulling back. He struggled in a silent staring contest with her all of two seconds – then he nodded and it wasn't spoken of, ever again, that Sirius Black had ever been serious._

_Then she glanced at James, and glanced away again, because it was much too intense right then. "Both of you. I'd be dead right now, if Sirius hadn't been reckless and you hadn't been-" She swallowed all the words that sprung to her mind. "If you hadn't been you."_

_James took a little before answering, but then he cracked a grin. "No problem, Evans. I'll be me any time and for anything you want."_

_They spent a long time discussing theories and ideas that only satisfied one as much as they rubbed another the wrong way, in hushed voices that they hoped weren't noticed, even though Sirius pointed out how weird it was that Madam Pomfrey hadn't come check why a Marauder's curtains were pulled shut, when she had a fair bit of experience in that area, and knew perfectly well that it meant there was non-allowed company with the young man in question._

_The night, which everyone spent in their own beds except for Lily and Remus, went and the morning came, and they were all ushered to the Headmaster's office in the company of Alice and Frank as soon as Madam Pomfrey thought she'd spelled Lily's wound acceptably. By then it was nearly noon and Black claimed to be on his deathbed because there was no food nearby when they came face to face with Professor Dumbledore and a very pale-looking Professor McGonagall._

_The chat didn't last long. When Lily described James' response to Voldemort's invitation through gritted teeth, only Remus remained solemn, as McGonagall was just livid and Alice still looked as though Lily was kidding._

"_We'd used it before." Sirius explained cheerfully, but Lily's eyes kept flickering to her Professor's flaring nostrils. "Put it on repeat in the Slytherin Common Room, volume all the way up. Didn't let anybody sleep for two days straight until one bright individual had the disappointing thought that we might actually have used disgusting Muggle equipment instead of the magic they'd been testing the whole place for." He gave James a reproachful look. "It's not the Marauder way, reusing material, mate."_

"_I was nervous, it was Voldemort!" James defended himself, and Peter flinched. "Besides, Bellatrix hadn't heard it before, and I figured it was only fair that she got to."_

"_St. Mungo's eventually tracked the funny joke to Hogwarts." Black added before either of the Professors had a chance to interrupt. Dumbledore seemed perfectly happy listening, and Lily was starting to see the truth behind Sirius' earlier fondness statement."McGonagall made sure they had our full names, contact information and home addresses for the summer, and insisted we'd surely have a reasonable explanation, and to keep sending owls until one reached them."_

_Professor McGonagall looked equal parts furious and stumped._

"_This would normally be the part where you ducked points or gave us detention." Sirius supplied helpfully._

_Lily privately thought that, after, Sirius had stopped paying attention to the cockroach clusters (she didn't want to know) and started paying attention to the conversation only when Dumbledore asked, in that almost supernatural voice (so different, however, from Voldemort's), something so totally incomprehensible it had to be a prophecy of their fates – "Are any of you interested in a place among the ranks of the Order of the Phoenix?"_

_Professor McGonagall froze, unfroze, blatantly called him mad, put down her foot (quite literally), called _them _young (which was the thing James and Sirius seemed to have taken most to heart) and finally relented when she realized just how willing the boys (except, perhaps, Peter, who seemed to have realized what was going on and looked incapable of opening his mouth without stammering) were. Alice and Lily were more hesitant at the idea, and then their hesitance combined and formed conviction. Their enthusiastic response to Dumbledore's further elaboration on his question clued McGonagall in. Sirius was still practically barking (it was so easy to draw comparisons after learning the truth) when she decided to cut it off.__"Well, as long as you're determined to do things recklessly, you might as well have clean-up help for when they go wrong." She snapped._

They hadn't, of course, run off to war right away and told their parents they'd reach them when they reached them. McGonagall had been right, but not _that_ right, about their madness. They (apparently) had a line (or at least, she and Dumbledore did – not even Remus was opposed to the idea of being put to work earlier), which meant that they wouldn't be doing anything for anybody until the end of their seventh year. And no one, not even in the Order, was to know what had happened in Hogsmeade in full detail – Dumbledore was loathe to the idea that they put themselves in danger even before they finished school. It was likely because of this that James was so restless.

He was just fighting for his home, though, wasn't he? So was she. It was dangerous, maybe, but everything started with chaos and failures until perfection was achieved. If she pulled back because there was a good chance she'd die trying to save something she cared about – trying to save something other people cared about - who else would step up?

That was mostly the reason she wasn't going to tell her family anything, which was currently a bad thing, because she hadn't the foggiest on how she was getting herself out of this without making her mother super-alert and suspicious or wondering why she'd just lied. She tried anyway. "It's, uh-" She winced. "It's really nothing, Mum. It's, ah, teenage girl stuff. Not boys." She added hastily, immediately tracking her mother's thoughts to her previous matter of Potter. "No, it's just school, and- and, I'm getting closer to my last year, and you know how I am when it comes to my grades." She spun wildly, the lie getting more elaborate (and, surprisingly, more believable) the more she put the most obscure parts of her mind to it. "Extra pressure."

"Well, alright." She answered slowly, still obviously dubious. "You'll do fine, of course, you always do. Just – promise me you know you can tell me anything."

She smiled to hide her chagrin. At eleven, this all seemed like such fun, such a wonderfully magical place with magical people and she was a part of that, she was one of them, somewhere she belonged and would fit in. And then she realized that, even there, there were people who thought she didn't, that the way she was different in what had been her world so far wasn't enough to make her just like the rest in the world that then started being hers too. Changing that had to be enough reason to lie.

"I promise."


	5. Remus and The Speculations

The house they were staying at was rented for three weeks for just that purpose. Lily's mother called it Paradise, her father called it affordable and Petunia claimed it to be in the end of the world. As far as Lily could tell, it was all the same place, and it was still in Great Britain. It was near a mountain range she was sure to be exploring, there was a little village not very far from the cottage, and that was about all she could care about.

The house was disquietingly alone in the nearby area, having similarly lonely cousins of which only two were visible from Lily's apprehensive point-of-view - she gritted her teeth and snapped out of the war-induced fear she wasn't going to contaminate her family with. It looked harmless enough, anyway – airy, campsite-like, very wooden, and it even had a porch, like a movie-perfect picture of a scene that made everyone instantly drunk with the sun because of the flashes the camera caught and the abundance of white.

The garden, at least the portion of land that was legally attached to the house, wasn't very big, but it was perfectly clear that anyone who ever owned it considered the revolving few feet part of it too, because it was too neat to be wild and yet not neat (in a random beauty sort of way) enough to have never had any sort of looking after. The trees in the woods that stood as though hunched guardians weren't very tall and the sun shone bright and unblocked at the family of four that got out of a car and dragged suitcases with them.

Lily went in quickly before Petunia remembered there were still rooms to be picked, and dropped her bags in the more secluded one, at the end of the not very long corridor that accessed the three rooms the place had on the second and tallest floor. She'd redirected any and all owls she could possibly be receiving there, because Petunia didn't like seeing them at all, so it was best if they avoided the rest of the house in the first place.

The room was small, but she'd made sure to check that it wasn't the smallest. It had a friendly-looking bed and a plain wooden closet imbedded on the wall, and Lily figured out this house hadn't been made for people staying inside. That was fine. She was far too preoccupied to stay still for three full weeks.

She unpacked and made herself home, and when she was done, the room had roughly the same appearance. She dropped to the bed and was perfectly ready to let her eyes flutter and take a nap when a sharp knock at the door forced them open. Petunia had mastered conveying her snappish attitude even over her knocking.

Lily dragged herself out of bed and to the door, opening it only a crack and hoping that let Petunia get the message. "Yes?" She asked, neutrally – say what you will, but Lily didn't deliberately seek conflict, even though her interactions with her sister tended to end that way.

Petunia eyed her very distastefully – but also not so, like she was exaggerating an emotion that, while certainly there, was second priority to another. She was plotting – Lily searched her eyes apprehensively. "Mum said we should go see the neighbourhood." She said briskly – she always said everything so quickly, like she was worried the world wouldn't wait for her if she spent too much time addressing her sister – and crossed her arms. "Only she seemed to think you were required along."

Lily grimaced. "Okay, well, you tell her I'm feeling very tired and sick from the drive and we'll both be perfectly happy-"

"No!" Petunia interjected quickly – then her cheeks filled with pink. "I mean- We oughtn't lie-" She clenched her teeth, and Lily almost let her jaw drop that Petunia was making up excuses to spend time in her company. "Besides," She continued, more composedly trying to feign terrible misfortune. "I've already told her you wanted to go out yourself."

Lily blinked. "Why would you do that? I _don't_ want to go out. I never said I _did_-"

"Mum's expecting us to go." Petunia interrupted loudly. Lily was too stunned to do much more than stare and look dumb. "Get dressed and we can go."

That snapped her out of it briefly. "What? What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

Petunia looked her up and down. "Honestly?" She said derisively, and _there_, that was old Petunia again.

Lily gritted her teeth and, knowing she'd regret it, she followed her out of the room.

The population, all sixty-three people it was made up of, were terrific and very cheerful gossipers. Lily and Petunia's first stop told them all they needed to know about the newcomer twins that would make them sixty-five in, according to the most popular prediction, a week. They learned Mr. Herbert was building a fence because he was tired of Mrs. Leary's cats sneaking into his yard and ruining his contest-winning flowers, and were warned about the group of 'young delinquents' that the few children that resided in the area all belonged too, and who apparently went around committing such crimes as skateboarding without protection and violating curfews their parents had not imposed, which was mightily irresponsible of the latter.

Petunia lashed out about it in that snobbish way she favoured whenever she was referring to people belonging to isolated communities as soon as they stepped out, and Lily was just glad that her sister was too _normal_ to yell on the street, because she was sure they'd left with a positive impression and she didn't want to ruin it until the following day at the earliest.

They stopped for an original and unnamed local pastry that sold really well – Petunia had stiffly paid for her sister's – and she got Lily to, somehow, miraculously, relax much further around her than she'd been able to in years. Which should really have been her first clue.

"Without original secret ingredients too, I hope." Petunia had said under her breath, eying the cake suspiciously. She managed to make Lily laugh, and Petunia wasn't funny, though granted, she wasn't laughing at what she said as much as she was laughing at Petunia herself.

Still, Lily _was _going through a war where being overly suspicious could save her life.

Just when her paranoia was reaching levels high enough that she'd soon bring it up herself, however, Petunia made it perfectly clear why she'd wanted Lily for a few hours. "So, the Wiz- the Wiza- the people with the sticks are having it out, are they?" She asked – it was very out-of-the-blue and very blunt; she mentioned it exactly when Lily was feeling as though she was ten again and Petunia didn't call her a freak, and Lily was startled and dismayed Petunia had, in fact, read her newspaper.

She instantly became defensive and dishonest. "What d'you mean?"

Petunia glanced at her uncomfortably, like she was embarrassed to be talking about such a _taboo_. "I- The weird paper, it- it said some nasty things." She said through clenched teeth. "I was really only making conversation. I don't _care_. But since mum forced us to come together-"

"Oh, quit it." Lily snapped furiously. "Mum didn't make you do anything at all!" She was overly angry, which felt like the price for that moment of vulnerability with her big sister who existed only in her mind still. "What gave you the _right_-"

"_Muggle_ is a freak synonym for normal, isn't it?" Petunia started, ignoring her, as if pretending she was talking to herself only helped drive away the unpleasantness the subject brought along.

"Petunia-"

"Because that article mentioned an awful lot about Muggles." She continued. "About- about killings-" She faltered. Lily's fingers were trembling as she brushed her hair away from her feverish face. Of course this was the only reason Petunia was acting so odd – she wouldn't ever be pleasant to Lily unless she got a very big scare. "It was crazy talk, though, I expect, obviously, wasn't it? I- Really, it actually used the word 'war', so it-"

But Lily's pursed lips were keeping quiet, because she couldn't come up with a decent excuse and maybe, desperately, deep down, she needed someone – anyone – to be listening for just once, somebody else to worry about her family – all of them older than her – someone else to put aside long-term plans out of fear she wouldn't be around to carry them out-

Lily broke eye contact with her sister, who was clearly working herself into a state following Lily's uncooperative lack of answer. Like a deflating balloon that had expanded too quickly in a burst of rushing air, Lily came to her senses. "No, of course not." She shoved her way past her sister with a forced laugh that was supposed to make the idea sound ridiculous. "That's mad. Honestly, you've watched one late night drama too many. Does it look as though I pack off to _war_ every year?"

Lily could see the house – Petunia had taken her while to bring the real reason for this stroll up, perhaps because she thought a couple of hours were enough to mollify over six years (and maybe Lily didn't give her enough credit, because she'd clearly been almost right) of callousness and disrespect – and she could hear her sister's high heels clinking along madly, hurrying to catch up behind her. She quickened her pace – only to stop abruptly when she did get inside.

In retrospect, she really should have thought to owl Remus and ensure James Potter would be doing something perfectly safe and non-Lily-related for the duration of her vacation. The best way to avoid James, she'd realized roughly three years ago when he first started stalking her, was to stalk him right back. She needed to know exactly where he'd be so she could avoid being there too. Of course, one could argue that there was no way for her to know he'd sweet-talked where they'd be staying out of her mother, or that he'd think it acceptable of him to follow her there.

It was a moot point now, because James was animatedly chatting to her mother on Lily's living room, perfectly comfortable and holding a chagrined Remus by his side. She'd likely as not misjudged the actual amount of control the latter had on the first.

Her mother was laughing because James had seemingly just made a hysterical joke about the Giant Squid (which her mother would be hearing about for the first time – sure enough, her eyes were a bit too wide, her expression overwhelmed), right up until Lily cleared her throat and wondered very hard how she was going to disassemble the party.

Remus looked very relieved and just as worriedly guilty, which fuelled her self-righteous indignation very well indeed. "Hello." She said, a bit awkward and a bit irritated. "What's going on?"

Her mother beamed at her. "You have a very charming young man for a friend, Lily." _He wished._

Lily eyed James grinning expression distastefully. "I- Do I?" She asked warily. "I mean, of course I do. Could I have a word with you, outside?" She requested through gritted teeth. "_Both _of you?" She glared a challenge for the two boys to say no.

"What," She said, after she'd dragged them away from her mother's protests and past Petunia's bulging eyes (she didn't tolerate sharing a house with abnormality, much less with abnormality's guests) "pray tell, do you think you're doing?"

"Lily, I'm very sorry." Remus apologized instantly. "I didn't know where he was taking me, and then your mother insisted we stay for tea-"

"Mrs. Evans is a very nice lady." Potter wasted no time in telling her brightly. "And she makes these scones-"

"I've tried, but I think it's too late to instil the notion of personal space unto him." Remus interrupted with a glare, and Lily forgave him.

She rounded on James.

"Alright, you know what, I've had it." She exploded. "I don't know what's been up with you this past month. You've been mad all your life, I'm sure, and you've been mad for the past six years for sure – I can attest to that. But you've not _once _done something like this." She gestured behind her. "Where did you even get my address? Or rather, my _addresses_, because this is my _vacation_?!"

Remus seemed even more horrified at this. Lily started to wonder what Potter had told him. James waved her protests away impatiently. "Well, obviously, because you don't seem to have realized there's a mass massacre going on in England which just so happens to focus on Muggleborns." He shrugged, saying all this very casually. "I have a rather vetted interest in keeping people alive. Particularly you."

She ignored that. Partially. "_I don't need anyone looking after me! _Especially _not _you!"

James scowled, crossing his arms. "Oh, really? According to Sirius, Bellatrix didn't agree."

Lily's eyes flashed, and Remus looked like he'd effectively spotted the danger, which either James was ignoring or enjoying. He stepped in. "Alright, alright – that's quite enough for both of you." Remus said, pushing them apart. "James, this is the last time I'm coming with you on a _holiday_." He hissed, now only to Potter.

Unfortunately, that set Lily off all over again. "You _what_?!" She shrieked. "You're _not _staying _here_, are you?!"

Remus winced, and she groaned. "What is _the matter with you_?" She asked Potter, who at least looked a little sheepish. "You and Remus randomly decided to spend the summer here for – how long?" She asked abruptly.

"Remus, Sirius, Peter and I." He corrected, perfectly calm and happy. "And for as long as you do. Your mother only told me _where _you'd be, you know."

Lily was rather capable of a lot of things, but she'd never actively plotted and considered murder-

Remus hurriedly tried to do what he usually did and fix whatever mess Potter had made up this time. "Lily, James was just-"

She interrupted him before he had the chance. "You know, Potter, I'm seventeen now. That means Hogwarts and the Ministry don't have to pretend to disapprove of me hexing you outside school anymore."

James was opening his mouth, perhaps to say something that would challenge and encourage her through sheer stupidity, but Remus shushed them both with a scowl. "Shut up._ Now_." He turned to Lily, looking regretful. "Lily, I'm very sorry about this. From now on, I'll try to keep James collared and leashed-" He ignored the sounds of protest. "Fact is, he invited us three to stay with him for a vacation, and I don't think any of our parents are expecting us sooner-"

"For crying out loud, I'm not going to force you to go home, Remus-" Lily muttered.

He grinned abashedly, and Lily condemned the fates for the friends he had once again. "I daresay, anyway, that Sirius would probably be the only one who knew why he really got it into his head to come here. I'm sorry," He repeated. "I'll see that he doesn't bother you – or your mother – too much."

"Lily's mother likes me!" James said indignantly. "She was perfectly fine talking to me just now-"

But that was just another thing for Lily to get riled up about.

"My mother's a Muggle." Lily said very slowly, as she was starting to realize that was the only way James seemed to understand her.

"So? What difference does that make?" He answered, a bit defensively. Lily caught on.

"It doesn't! That's not my point at all!" She said exasperatedly. "I just meant- Don't just talk to her like - like you're talking to Black about the Chuddley Cannons! She's not- That's not her _normal_, James." She clenched her teeth very hard to keep form saying anything further – she was both afraid of what she might overshare with him and of starting another fight, which she suddenly didn't feel like having again.

And the worst was that it was like he guessed it – he stared too long with warm brown eyes. Remus looked between the two of them slightly suspiciously. "Why not?" James finally said. "You're her daughter, aren't you? Won't she want to know more about _your_ world?"

"That's the problem, don't you see?" She said, a bit snappish. "I'm not part of her world anymore, and she's not part of mine. It's not that simple."

The silence stretched for a while, and Lily flushed. James looked a little put-out, and Remus was clearly nonplussed.

"I'm going home." She said suddenly, breaking the quiet as effectively as a shrill banshee. She glanced at the sky. "It's getting a little late. We've been out here for a while. You should go too." She turned and hoped the clipped voice made them follow the short orders.

For the brief ten seconds she spent walking toward her house (and the window curtains slam shut unexpectedly), she thought they had – then she heard Remus call her name.

When she turned she was a little relieved to see that, at least, he was alone. She spotted a hunched retreating back, already in the distance. Remus approached, but didn't go up to the porch. "It's really alright, Remus, just as long as he doesn't-" She started, assuming he was trying to apologize again.

But he shook his head and cut her short. "No, it's not about that, though I'm still sorry-" He sighed. "It's about what happened last Easter."

Lily stiffened automatically, and Remus winced. She made her way down to him, looking over her shoulder towards the self-shutting window nervously. This was not for eavesdropping ears.

"Yeah, I know it's not-" He said, looking resigned. He shook his head. "Anyway, I had some suspicions after we talked in the Hospital Wing-" He hesitated.

She sighed. "I noticed, Remus." She hadn't been able to get a single word of explanation out of him afterwards. "Am I about to hear about the complete uncovering of You-Know-Who's entire operation?"

Remus rubbed his neck, insecure. "Not nearly, no. _I _don't even know where the puzzle's bits and pieces I've managed to put together go, nor even which puzzle it is. That's actually part of the reason I'm telling you this only now."

"And the rest of that reason?" She said, putting her best efforts into delaying the actual conversation they were to have.

He grimaced. "I'm terrified of what James and Sirius might get into their heads to do. I need backup, and Peter's not going to cut it."

"Okay." She said slowly. In a very weird, Marauder sort of way, it made sense. "Is that why this is coming up now?"

"Yeah, of course." He lied quickly. Lily stared but didn't comment. "Also, if you wouldn't mind not telling them about this-"

"Of course not."

"Right. Well," He paused. "you remember – how Voldemort seemed interested in James?"

Lily huffed, for some reason. "Not _that _interested-" She began hotly.

"Yes, I know." Remus interrupted warily. "You've said-"

"He seemed to be just throwing things out there." She continued, unable to help herself. "It wasn't like he _really _thought he'd be able to turn James around-"

"Yes." He interrupted again, now looking intent. "That in itself is rather strange, isn't it? But just the fact that he tried to draw him in at all – why? What good would James be to him?"

"I suppose-" Lily said slowly and reluctantly. "I suppose he'd want a spy in the Order-"

"James had never even heard of the Order by then, though." Remus interrupted. "How could Voldemort?" Lily gave her head a moment's pause. Remus kept going. "Except – he might have known something else. Something you said, back then – that James was a Gryffindor through and through. I think that anyone who knew him, even an acquaintance – maybe not even that – they'd agree with you."

"So?" She frowned. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Well – that and the fact that James hasn't exactly kept secret what his opinion on the matter of the war is-" He trailed off. "Someone might make the obvious logical jump between that and knowing he'd very likely join some sort of counter-Voldemort organization as soon as anyone let him. Voldemort could have known this, couldn't he? And he thought, _here lies my chance of having a source of information in the Order_. Maybe James has a strong resolve – and then again, maybe he doesn't, or so Voldemort would have thought, and he took the chance."

"That's a bit far-fetched, isn't it?" Lily said, shocked.

"Maybe." Remus conceded. "Or maybe it's just a really scary possibility that anyone would want to call far-fetched. I've had- too much time to mull over this alone, Lilly. And you forget – Voldemort didn't rise to power by doing the obvious."

"Well, but how could he have known – what, James' personality traits?" Lily challenged, a bit more subdued – but there was a shrewd look in Remus eyes.

"Exactly."

And it hit her, so fully and so incredibly breathtakingly ugly, that not all of reality was white and pink, and for Voldemort to exist, someone would have to have thought of the black. _Are you the bitch? _Bellatrix had known – she'd known they were Animagus, though not who _they_ were. Somehow, the Death Eaters knew not only of this little school gang's existence, they also knew of their inner secrets.

"There's someone passing information – a- a spy. At Hogwarts." She said quietly.

"I know." Remus answered, and he bowed his head to the silence that followed.

"Oh." She murmured. But she shook herself out of it, because she couldn't afford to lose her mind a little bit further – it was nearing its edge as it was. "Okay. So there's someone telling Voldemort about- things inside the castle." She told him tersely. She couldn't waste emotions on this – she'd used them all up on just about everything else. "Why? What's his interest? Students couldn't tell them much about Dumbledore, or any other Professor that might be in the Order. And I doubt one of the teachers is the spy – who's the teacher that knows anything of worth about any student? And besides – if we assume this- this person exists, what's Voldemort's use for another spy in James?" She said all this very fast, almost worried that he'd forget something important, but Remus was nodding along, perfectly serious. He had the answers ready.

"Because maybe this person only counts as far as inner-Hogwarts matters go." He said. "Maybe he – or she – is someone who is by no means part of the Order, or going to be part of the Order. And- and I reckon it's a student, Lily." He eyed her nervously. "Maybe more than one. And I don't think Dumbledore's the one Voldemort wants spied. I believe it's about the students, Lily, I think – I think this is about using the fresh, impressionable young minds leaving Hogwarts, ready to be picked up by him. And those he sees can get into the Order-"

"He turns them into spies." She said flatly.

"Tries to." Remus corrected. "I do still have faith in our classmates."

"Yes, well, a fair few of them seemed to be amused by that faith last Easter." She snapped.

Lily was angry – at all this – the theory Remus had webbed and not shared was so complex, so reliant on the cold manipulation of a single individual – and yet – she didn't doubt it, not for a second. It made such incredibly nasty, horrible sense – it almost had to be true, just by the horror movie principle. Voldemort was making Hogwarts a training facility – or, rather, because she had caught on to what Remus meant by 'more than one', he was making Slytherin House a training facility – his personal shrine.

"Shouldn't we be telling Dumbledore about this?" She asked, stained with a desperation and helplessness she couldn't keep out of her voice.

"You're assuming Dumbledore doesn't know." Remus pointed out. "In my experience, what Dumbledore doesn't know is rarely enough to fill a sentence. And even if he didn't – if Voldemort's followers' blunt-headed ways were going unnoticed under his nose –what's he supposed to do? Chuck all the Slytherins out of the school?"

"I hate logic." She murmured, watching the idea that someone perfectly capable would deal with this problem before she had to witness its consequences fly away.

Remus offered her a thin smile. "It's often misunderstood."

"So we don't tell Dumbledore. Fine." She gritted her teeth. "Voldemort turned to James because someone told him he'd be likely to join the Order – because he makes a point of announcing his life to the whole castle." Lily kept thinking, because logic was uncharacteristically the least complicated option she had on the table right then. "Only You-Know-Who didn't seem much convinced – I don't blame him, you need only look at James to know he'd become a Death Eater only when they start waving and smiling and kissing babies' cheeks-" There was a vindictive pleasure in her voice as she said this. "And-"

"And he's going to try again." Remus took over quietly. "Probably with someone else. And not everybody has got James' nerve."

"Or he's done so already – he's found a spy, and now he's just covering all his bases. He wasn't all that invested in Potter." Lily repeated – this point seemed important. She hugged herself and wished to forget, so she changed the subject. "Speaking of whom – you didn't send him away, did you?" She was suddenly anxious at the ideas that might run through James' head.

Remus shrugged and went along with the new topic. "No, he wanted to go. Just as well, because I needed to tell you this. He was fairly certain you didn't want him here right about now, anyway." Remus grinned. "He means well, James. But I think you knew that."

She crossed her arms uncomfortably. "I suppose you wouldn't have a theory on why Voldemort left so quickly, too?" She asked, preferring diverting the subject to actually thinking about it, and also vaguely hopeful the answer might be yes.

But Remus, unconvincingly and looking as though he were debating something with himself very hard, shook his head slowly. She wouldn't get it out of him that night, she knew, so she gave up. "And the someone – someones – passing information?"

She didn't know why she was asking this – it was masochism, she was sure – she knew the answer, and sure enough-

"I'm sorry, Lily." Remus said softly, half regretfully, which she appreciated. "That curse – it's called Sectumsempra, if memory doesn't fail me - James and Sirius have ended up in the Hospital Wing so often because of it, Madam Pomfrey considered giving them the medicine and charms they needed to mend it themselves. Then she remembered who they were, though." He added hastily at Lily's look. "I expect Snape has widespread its use."

She flinched – she couldn't help it, even after a full year. She usually avoided having her thoughts linger on Snape, and this was why. "He spent a lot of time with Avery and Mulciber when they were at school still." Her voice was a little hoarse.

Remus looked like he was wishing he'd never mentioned it at all. "I'm sure he's not- he's not a-"

"A Death Eater?" She murmured. "No, surely not." She couldn't tell if her voice expressed sarcasm or hope, but Remus sighed.

"I'm- really sorry about all this. I should really have done something during the O.W.L.'s-"

He sounded guilty. She frowned. "What're you talking about?"

He looked a little stumped. "I just thought – if you were still his friend, he might have had some sort of good influence – and James – well, _we_ rather messed that up-"

"Oh, come now, Remus." She said impatiently, and tried to pretend it wasn't shakily too. "If Se- Snape didn't want to be helped, there was nothing I or anybody else could have done to stop him. He's a grown man, it's his life and it's his decisions. Lord knows he's not the only one to have to make them. If it hadn't – hadn't been what happened, it would have been something else, and I'd have stopped trying to be his friend anyway. He was long gone by the time I noticed. And James-" She hesitated. "You all made him do nothing. James didn't walk up to the bloke and tell him to call me a _Mudblood_-" Remus winced. "He was antagonizing him, sure – blame him all you want for that – and, yes, you should have done something then, and I should have done something too many times to count before that, but I didn't want to open my eyes and I paid for it. But it doesn't matter. In the end, no one's to blame for Snape's choices but himself, because he's a person just like everybody else, and everybody else doesn't make him who he is."

The whole thing came tumbling from her lips like she was venting against the winds about something that was plaguing her the same way it was plaguing Remus, but which she'd clearly put a lot more thought into. Perhaps she'd needed to say it aloud to be personally assured of it – and still the doubts lingered. It wasn't easy, forgiving herself for not fixing everything.

"Let's just – not talk about it anymore." Remus gave in tersely. "I'm sorry I brought it up in the first place."

"It's okay." Lily admitted. "I think I needed to get all of that off my chest."

"I understand." Remus said, smiling a little more relaxed smile, and Lily decided to take advantage of their newfound camaraderie.

"There's something I've been meaning to ask you." She said slowly. Bringing up Hogsmeade hadn't reminded her of unpleasant memories only, and her curiosity tended to stay with her for months. Besides, this was the first time she'd had the opportunity of speaking alone to Remus properly. "The four of you – you're very close, aren't you?"

Apprehensively, Remus nodded. "I know I'm telling you this when I haven't even told them, but it's really only because they're mad-"

"No, I know." Lily interrupted quickly. "That's not- I mean, what I was wondering wasn't that – it's about the Animagus business." She plunged ahead. "They said they hadn't told you?" It came out as more of a question than she had meant it to.

Remus spent a while silent, staring at her with guarded eyes – she'd never noticed until then how that seemed to be the rule when it came to him, and the time he spent with the rest of the Marauders the exception. "No." He said at last. "They didn't."

She waited, but he wasn't forthcoming. Remus seemed awkward, and Lily felt very interfering, but she had had a nasty suspicion and so she pressed on. "Why? If the three of them did it – you're the _Marauders _- why not you?"

Remus shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. They, uh, probably thought I'd try and stop them. They did tell me eventually." He added weakly.

Lily gave it a moment's pause. "Remus, is this about you being a werewolf?"

She wasn't as shocked about those words as he was, but it was close. "W- what?" He gasped.

Lily shifted nervously. "I- You disappear once a month, I mean, it wasn't hard to– And, well, one of the times it happened I saw you on the grounds through the windows with Pomfrey and I was doing an essay on lycanthropy for Madison at the time, had a lunar chart in front of me-"

"Lily." Remus clearly saw her agitation. "It's- alright. You, uh, put two and two together – got four. That's not a crime..."

"But- I-" But she could not think to say anything else. Remus looked downright miserable, with a fake smile a stranger could have seen through.

The quiet was no longer comfortable, and she itched to break it or break something else, if only it would make him lose that expression. She was feeling terrible, and the subject change from Snape had clearly benefitted her only as much as it had pained him.

In the end, she didn't have to break anything. Remus seemed to steel himself for this. "Lily, I – See, you need to understand that from a very young age, I've not had any proper contact with other human beings. I appreciate you taking this calmly and – Well, as it is, I'm not- safe, and I know what you're going to say, I know Dumbledore never ought to have let me into a castle full of young people-"

"Wasn't going to say that at all-" She protested, but he didn't look as though he'd heard her.

"And – and – James and Sirius and Peter were – are – cleverer than they let on. They not only figured it all out – very quickly, I might add – they hid from me something they thought of as a – ah - nice surprise." Remus paused for a second then – his expression was clouded and his eyes were conflicted, but she could see how much it had meant to him, what his friends had done. Even – especially – considering how dangerous, illegal, it was.

She knew that, because it wasn't hard – that sliver of suspicion - the way it had suddenly gone from Remus missing at full moons to all four of the boys disappearing and looking exhausted in the mornings, for over two years now – she knew. She _knew _what they'd done – _why _they'd done it-

"They – they're good friends and very good people. And I still don't know whether that was good or bad back then, but they-" He stuttered to a stop.

Lily filled in. "Became Animagi because werewolves don't tend to attack animals." Remus winced, but then all of him became very still. "They've been keeping you company during the full moons. Am I wrong?" She prodded gently.

Remus sat down on the steps that led to her (temporary) porch and she did too. "No." He sighed. "You must think we're being incredibly reckless fools-"

"Well, yes." She admitted. "But I'm usually thinking that anyway. Remus," She said warily. "I- I'm not in any place to berate you on the matter-"

Remus offered her a tiny smile. "You were when you found out about it in the first place."

She flushed. "Yes, but I've since remembered there's barely anything you four won't do. And I'm fairly sure the shock's wearing off. Either way," She continued. "yes, I do reckon you're putting them in danger-" Here, Remus flinched, and she felt guilty until he opened his mouth.

"Not only them." He blurted out. "We- we go out on the grounds those nights." Lily's eyes widened. "I don't even know what comes over me – when I'm on my own, it sounds like a terrible idea, and I always decide to call it off, but then I talk to Sirius and James and they always laugh at my worries, so I relax-"

"Remus..." Lily groaned.

"I _know_." He said quickly. "I know. But-"

"But you're secretly just as mad as they are, aren't you now?" She admonished. "Honestly, I used to have faith in you. You're still a Marauder, and I tend to forget it..." But she was protesting less than she would have if Remus didn't look so guiltily aware already. She avoided his gaze and switched topics. "Is there a full moon, in the next few weeks?"

She heard him shuffle. "Yes – but you needn't worry. I won't be here then, I'll be home." There was a faint, but bitter, hollowness in his voice. Lily cringed.

"That's not-" She took a breath. "Remus, I didn't mean that I was worried you'd just decide to run around free and dangerous, I-" She shook her head. "Never mind. You know, you- you're infuriating. There are a plenty of things to feel miserable about in this world already, and you shouldn't make your life one of them. You've got three great friends who've proven to you already your- condition is no good reason to keep away from other people. I'd like to believe I'm a fourth, and you should take into consideration that I spent a year knowing about this secret you manage to hide so well and I didn't feel as though I had any need to change my behaviour towards you." She hugged his side. "Plus, I _do _like to pride myself that I have better morals than Sirius Black, you know. I don't know why you'd think I'd condemn something he rightly defends."

Remus smiled weakly, but she preferred that to the fake one that preceded it. "I-" He stood up, appearing almost too embarrassed to even look her in the eye. He shook his head. "Thank you, Lily. You – all of you, James, Sirius, Peter – you're better friends than I deserve." He walked down the stairs too fast – almost as though he were running away – Lily stopped him.

"Remus-" She called him exasperatedly, standing up too. "Please, just – Snape was a person like everybody else in the sense that he had freedom to make his own choices; you're a person like everyone else because you have freedom not to let everybody else make your choices for you. You are who you are, and that'd be nobody's business. If there comes a time where you need to know that, do remember you didn't want friends and you got them anyway, and lycanthropy didn't come into play, then or now or in-between."

Remus turned fully then, and though it was very dark, his eyes were still two little white shinnies glued to his silhouette, which blended almost seamlessly with the black woods behind him. In a burst of lucidity she wondered why her mother hadn't come outside to check on them (then she remembered the curtains). "Lily-" He seemed lost for words, but then he found the last ones she'd ever expect. "James really does like you, you know. It's because of these things you sometimes say without even meaning to - I'm willing to bet he could easily quote them all back to you." And then he left, without saying another word, walking towards one of the houses she could see from hers.

She went to bed without knowing whether she'd made the right impression on him, without knowing what he'd meant and without knowing why that made her so nervous. And she _was_ nervous - enough not to notice a pair of young wide eyes glittering along in the starless summer dark like Remus' had, vanishing only when they agreed with their corresponding ears that there'd be no more happening that needed to be seen or heard that night.


	6. Harry and The Mountains

Lily dreamt that night. She hadn't fallen asleep neither easily nor quickly, because her mother had insisted on knowing more about 'those nice boys' and Petunia kept pestering her about the paper - her tired body only gave in when all she could hear from outside were leaves rustling and crickets whistling and her mind had turned to the last of her worries - the Marauders and their monthly adventures.

But the kind-faced wolf with a smiling snout, the smirking dog, the squeaky voice and the powerful sound of hooves stretched, faded, built into something overshadowing and engulfing, and soon it wasn't so anymore, it was all dark with one bulging light, threatening to spill but not quite strong enough for it – but then – she could not help it any more than she could help breathing - she headed for it herself, plunged into its small confines and brought loose tendrils of black with her, which somehow warmed and weaved until they formed a messy little mop of black tuffs-

When she woke up, she did so with a sweaty start, but she turned over and snored again. The second time she awoke, she forgot the dream and was left weirdly thinking of that Seer she'd met that one time at the fair she remembered once from a different vacation.

She left her bed more tired than she had been lying down.

This was the beginning of a routine. The dreams did not come always, and they were not the same each night they did, but her vacation wasn't being nearly restful enough. She could find comfort in the fact that Remus was keeping his word – she saw neither hide nor hair of any of the Marauders once for a full two days. Granted, she was hardly a sociable visitor to any crowded space there might be in the neighbouring miles – although when she did, she wasn't completely rid of the four of them. Apparently, they'd already made an impression, not only on the respectful villagers that had hitherto condemned the one local group of miscreants and now condemned the two groups of miscreants, but also on the local teenage girls. The four of them, unlike Lily, had been prowling around, and though taking care to avoid her, they had become very popular.

"Good-looking ones, too." She overheard an energetic sixteen-year-old local girl tell Petunia once, who appeared, at the time, to be taking a break from pretending the uncivilized hicks in the village didn't exist, which was probably a result of her not knowing who these _good-looking ones_ were, exactly. "Well, three of them, anyway. The other one's cute, but a pinch-his-cheeks kind of cute, you know? And the black-haired ones? _So _hot. They hang around a lot, and they're always asking about that red-haired friend of yours. Seem keen not to run into her actually, though the one with the messy hair-"

That was when Lily interrupted and dragged Petunia away, because she'd figured out that anyone familiar with Lily being around was good enough reason to go back to the pretending. She hadn't been going to the village often before that, but she began a concentrated effort to avoid it afterwards.

Still, this went on for a while – Lily was even getting hopeful she might be able to avoid the boys completely for the whole of her vacation, when the first magical thing of the decidedly Muggle setting happened. The rest of the day was, then, no less such.

Six years at Hogwarts had taught her that owls and breakfast meant clearing a landing space on the table. The fact that it was summer had taken her carefully developed reflexes away, and so, though the jug and her cup were safe, her plate nearly toppled to the ground.

She fortunately recognized the owl. "You're nearly as clumsy as your owner, you know that?" She snapped irritably.

The owl narrowed its eyes at her and hooted indignantly. Her mother nearly hooted as well, and Lily cringed when she took notice of the expressions on the faces of the rest of her family. They didn't seem to think it likely that an owl would land in her breakfast plate and be offended at something Lily had said.

"Here." Lily mumbled, offering Mercury a piece of toast in lieu of an apology. She untied his scroll and he flew off at once, ruffling his feathers dignifiedly. Petunia jumped up as they brushed her hair.

"_Owls_!" She shrieked, scratching and pulling at her hair as though she had a bad case of lice. "Where did the idea to use _owls _even come from?! What _freaks_! The food is _ruined_!"

Lily grimaced as her sister stomped off, presumably to re-wash her hair. She had the strong suspicion that never, in six years of her immersion in the Wizarding World, had she sent a letter that might have arrived to her parents at a meal time – clearly, she'd been right in doing so – but the same concerns wouldn't have crossed Alice's mind, because she had grown up eating with one hand and petting an owl with the other. Lily had left her bedroom window open for this precise reason, but apparently she'd made the mistake of doing the same to the door.

After she'd forbidden Lily from touching any more of her food, her mother seemed plenty excited, as she always was, about the whole thing, and was quite keen on knowing who the letter was from. Her father was grumpy about his breakfast and couldn't care less ("As long as she keeps in mind the standard father-daughter conversation about boys that I never had with her, let her have her privacy, Miriam. Are there any more eggs?"), but Lily wasn't hungry anymore, so when he managed to calm her mother down and sit with another plate, she excused herself and went up to her room to read the letter.

_Lily_, it read, in Alice's untidy handwriting, _what do you mean, the Marauders are _there_?! You can't spend nearly a month with them as the only available non-Petunia company. Murder is punishable by law, you know, it'll send you to Azkaban for life. How did they know where – and when – you were going, anyway? I know James is a bit obsessed with you_, _but I didn't think he'd take it this far._

_I miss you a lot and I'm honestly considering going to visit you, if only to prevent the aforementioned situation and maybe escape boredom. Hope you forgive me if I tell you I miss Frank the most. I haven't seen him since school ended. It's that mother of his, she drives me up the walls, and she knows it too. She keeps feeding him excuses not to visit. I would know, she's spent the whole summer dragging him around London in 'very important events'. And now, like that thing Dumbledore mentioned last Easter wasn't enough, he's gotten into his head he wants to be an Auror, so there are strangers at the Ministry who are getting to see and be pestered by my boyfriend more often than I am. And after last time he took me to his house, we both agreed his things were entirely too breakable, so I can't even ambush him there._

_I'm _really _sorry that Petunia ended up joining you._ – "Yeah, and you've met her the once." Lily muttered to herself – _If you need me to get you anything from Zonko's to deal with the situation, you need only ask. Aside from that and Potter, have you at least been having fun? All I've done is sit around and stare at the walls, and my mum's paintings are hardly that interesting. Marlene hasn't been answering my owls, which I find strange. Have you been able to talk to her at all since the end of term? I know she's not a student anymore, but you wouldn't think she'd forget her friends that easily. I'll admit I'm a little nervous – I know for a fact we weren't the only ones Dumbledore made an offer to, and Marlene has always had the tendency to be reckless. Mary's parents have taken her to Spain, and I think it's because she's told them all about what's been going on in our world. I'm not sure they'll let her come to Hogwarts next year, and she says she's really regretting telling them. They're terrified, because Mary couldn't keep her mouth shut and told them about Dumbledore's idea and how she was planning to say yes to him on top of everything else._

_I only meant to tell you that I have nothing to do with all that, but I managed to drastically change the mood of a piece of writing in the process. Well, do tell me if you're a good friend and will let me visit in your answer._

_Love,_

_Alice._

Lily instantly fished some parchment out of her bag, but as she wrote the first word, an inexplicable hesitation overcame her.

Fact was, she didn't want to write a letter to Alice with empty reassurances that their classmates were fine – that they'd see them again – that, while she hadn't heard pip or squeak from Marlene all summer long, of course she was safe (though there wasn't a very good reason for that non-belief, really) – that there was no reason to worry about Frank becoming an Auror and an Order member – because those were all grand lies, and suddenly she was miserable and not in the mood to lie properly.

She laid everything down and made the decision to– not think about it right then.

Her eyes fell on her bag – she had made it the very day she had arrived and not undone it since. It was a bit earlier than usual, but if the choice was between leaving in the morning and staying in the house with Petunia's murderous mood and that letter glaring at her with nasty reminders, she'd take the hike.

She had taken to exploring the small mounts, which were conveniently in the exact opposite direction of the tiny house temporarily belonging to the Marauders. In the small bag, she had packed mostly water, and she had been taking it out every afternoon to climb the tiny hills. She was enjoying it – she would be completely alone for hours on end, and it meant not having her already suspicious mother inquiry her about spending too much time at the house.

She grabbed the bag and left the house.

Where she was headed, which was in the opposite direction of the road that took her to the Marauders' and the village, there was only one cottage, twin to the rest of its neighbours, and it was also one of the two she could see from her own bedroom. She didn't believe it was empty and abandoned solely because of the lights that shone through its windows at night, which was the only proof of life she'd witnessed so far.

That day was the day that stopped being true. The houses in the street didn't have proper boundaries, so that no one was quite sure which carrot plantation belonged to whom, but, here and there, small patches of green-looking bushes cropped up, contributing more to the forest-like feel of the place than the privacy of the people living in it. Through one of these, a young boy of maybe ten was peering, his body only half-hidden as though afraid of being seen and afraid of going unnoticed.

Lily slowed down, staring at him. The little boy seemed to be debating something with himself – perhaps whether he could get away with pretending not to have been seen.

"Hello." Lily said, taking the choice away from him. "You're the one who's been following me, aren't you?"

Because now she knew – she'd been feeling as though she were being watched every day, from her doorstep to the very end of the street, where there was no path except for the one she made. This had only fuelled her resolve to be as further away from home as much as possible, because if there was someone – something – there that shouldn't be, she wanted her family away from its path. Unfortunately, she was far too insecure in her sixth sense to be really worried, so all she had accomplished was having her mother ask about Lily's prolonged absences from the house that weren't being spent in the village with Petunia.

The boy turned scarlet, and whatever confidence he might have built up shredded before Lily's eyes.

"No, it's okay." Lily said hurriedly. "I'm actually relieved-" She shook her head. "Never mind. What's your name?"

He didn't look too inclined to talk, but now Lily had too many questions.

"I won't bite, I promise."

He cleared his throat. "Harry."

She grinned. "I'm Lily. Can you tell me why you're so interested in my walks, Harry?"

He flushed guiltily, but finally stepped completely around the plant. He was small – he only appeared ten when the plant was hiding most of his body. His hair was thin and a brown so light it was almost blonde.

"I'm sorry." Harry said, and he shuffled closer so that Lily could see the tiny glint of curiosity in his eyes. "I overheard you talking to your friend the other day." He blurted.

"My friend?" She asked slowly, dreading the answer.

"The one with all the scars." Harry said, now eagerly. "You called him Remus, but the other boys called him Moony."

Lily was horrified. Quite apart from what Harry might have heard by spying on the Marauders, she knew her conversation with Remus had been far from harmless for Muggle ears. "Stealthy, are you?" She said weakly.

Harry smirked. "Like a ninja."

Lily winced and tried to make up a way to salvage the situation. "So, uh, so- so, you liked the game we were playing?" _Aw, jeez..._

Harry frowned. "Game?"

"Yes?"

"It wasn't a game."

"It wasn't?"

He shook his head. "You go to Hogwarts, don't you? I'm going too, next year!" He said excitedly.

"You're – oh, you're a wizard!" Lily breathed, only half-undoing the knot of worry. "I didn't know there was a magical family living in the area."

"There isn't." Harry explained. "Because I've only just found out what I am a couple of weeks ago. This tall professor came to my house and did some really wicked cool things with her wand to make my mum and dad believe her."

The relief Lily had so tentatively grasped slipped through her fingers. "You're a Muggleborn."

"What's that?" Harry questioned curiously, and Lily had an inspirational moment of understanding about why Severus had lied to her all those years ago.

"It's, ah, nothing. It just means you come from a non-magical family. It doesn't really matter. I'm a Muggleborn witch myself." She forced a smile. "I'm sure you'll love Hogwarts. But, er, what, exactly, did you hear Remus and me saying?"

"Not very much." He stammered vaguely, but before Lily could call him out on it, he was saved by a very pregnant blond woman who stepped outside from Harry's house behind him. Her eyes scanned the nearby bushes before settling on the pair of them, from which Lily concluded this was Harry's mother.

"Harry!" She breathed, and Lily thought her relief was a little exaggerated, and yet surprisingly true, when she approached them. "What have I told you about leaving the house without warning us?"

He looked disgruntled. "I just came out to get a bit of fresh air..."

His mother glared at him and then turned to Lily with a strained smile. "Ah, I'm sorry if he was bothering you-"

Lily frowned, wondering why she'd assume so, and then remembered the old ladies at the village talking about the local group of kids, which everyone over the age of nine and below the age of fourteen belonged to. She cleared her throat. "Erm – not at all. We were just talking about Hogwarts-"

The woman's eyes widened. "Harry!" She cried, turning to her son. "You're not supposed to tell _anyone _about that!"

But Harry was back to being excited. "Don't worry, mum, she's a witch too! She has a werewolf friend with _wicked _scars, and-"

The woman turned back to her with her bulging eyes – the stress couldn't be good for the pregnancy - and Lily offered her a tiny, forcibly and hastily put-together thin smile, because her mind was reeling at _what_, exactly, Harry had heard. "Oh," Harry's mother gave a tiny little squeak. "I didn't realize-" She pulled herself together. "I'm Lara Todd – nice to meet you."

"It's, uh, alright... I'm Lily." Lily said warily. "But, erm, you're right. Harry, you can't expect every stranger you meet to be magical-"

That was the cue Mrs. Todd needed to turn back to her son.

"See?!" She reprimanded him. "That's what I've been telling you for days now-"

"Doesn't mean I can't _leave the house_-" He said resentfully.

Lily was beginning to imagine a way to vanish when someone behind her cleared his throat. It was Harry's father, and as it turned out, all three of them were greatly interested in meeting a second witch.

Tea got involved – she had to ride through the shock, and then the curiosity. Before Lily knew it, she was describing Switching Spells with the child-like enthusiasm that could only come from having an enraptured audience. She came to the realization that she could predict Mr. and Mrs. Todd's responses and reactions by keeping in mind how her own parents would react – and as her parents were people to whom the subject Lily considered off-limits – there was a very thick line, to her, between the world that was her home for most of the year and the one that included Petunia – she appreciated the conversation more than she normally would have.

Her morning turned out to be rather enjoyable, as it was, anyway. She realized quickly why she'd been approached that specific day – Harry wanted to hear more after her conversation with Remus, and he had waited a fair bit still since he had listened in on it in the first place; a ten-year-old's patience can be expected to stretch only so thin. She was able to, rather surreptitiously, if she did say so for herself, hint that talking about whatever Harry might or might not have heard was absolutely out of the question.

By the time she beat her hasty retreat home, it was time for lunch, and she was disappointed she hadn't gotten to see the mounts in the morning, which was her original purpose.

The afternoon dragged lazily, since she was trying to keep her mind functioning to a bare minimum, and Lily woke up in time to have dinner and be wide-awake for a night stroll. In her room, her unfinished letter sat untouched, taking up more focus than it should, so she put on a cloak she unburied from her trunk and chose the chilly darkness outside over her bed.

She could see the sky all the way from the cottage, invaded by the darker outline of the mounts. The lights in Harry's house were off as Lily made her reckless way in that direction.

Nobody stopped her this time. The closer she got to her goal, the less vegetation she saw, which she supposed to mean the earth would be melting the green into the reddish brown underneath. There was little she could see ahead as she started the climb, but there was still a vague path she could make out, straight up and ahead as though she were rising to the Heavens, an impression only magnified with how easily the top of the tiny mountain melded with the sky except for the barely distinguishable blurred outline in the middle.

She didn't know why she thought this was a great idea. The ground was cold, the only sound were the crickets, it was a bit windy up there, and the sky was pitch black, even if she could see the stars. Out of stubbornness or some other related non-quality she hadn't previously known in herself, she plopped right down, locked her arms under her legs and her chin on her knees, and she stared around.

She was fully prepared to stay for at least a few hours – she didn't even have a clear reason for that, but the top of the mountain sounded like the place to be right then, away from letters, and children who could be killed because they were born to Muggle parents, away from her comfortable bed and away from magic and any of the worlds she belonged to.

She couldn't have been there long before she heard padding on the ground behind her, soft and non-descript.

"Oh – hello." She said in surprise.

She noticed hooves first. And then a body of a deer – a stag, judging by the antlers. She wasn't sure what startled her most: the fact that it was not running away from the human that she clearly was, or that it didn't seem to have noticed there was a human there in the first place.

It was quite still now, and she couldn't very well take notice of the details in the dark properly, but it was big, and beyond the already-noted type of animal it was, that was all she could see. The way it looked, it was almost as though it was studying her, and as though it was as surprised as she was with the situation.

But it didn't stay that way. It trotted forward, not too slowly, but not too quickly either. Lily didn't think this was very normal behaviour, but what did she know, she'd never claimed herself a naturalist. She let it approach with wide eyes, and only when it was a foot from her did it slow down, folding his long furry members and setting himself with all the comfort of a being planning to stick around.

Lily blinked, but then she couldn't help herself. Her hand reached out to scratch its back, and she felt very accomplished that it blew air through its nose and twitched its ears, looking pleased. The stag was very warm. "Strange. I didn't know deer were this friendly toward people." She mused.

The stag whined noncommittally, though it almost sounded as though he was huffing reproachfully and trying to hide it. "Sorry. _Stags_. I didn't know stags were this friendly toward people." She stifled a smile, but it looked appeased. "You're almost as touchy as Alice's owl."

This time, she was sure, the stag was narrowing its dark eyes at her. She petted its head and it didn't seem particularly offended anymore. "Speaking of whom, she wrote to me this morning." She was losing it, she was sure. She wouldn't have opened her mouth to a soul about what Alice had written and what feelings it ignited in her, but, apparently, all she needed was a stag. "She's quite worried about a number of things. Frank, that's her boyfriend, is trying to make sure he ends up dead before he hits twenty and there are quite a few classmates and friends of ours missing. She's my best friend, which is why I don't want to tell her to tough up and get used to it, so I came here to avoid having to look at the letter." She paused. "I also don't want to tell her it's a bit pointless to worry, because we'll all likely be dead by the time she actually will have to."

And then, suddenly, thank goodness for the stag, because there wasn't a single person she could think of right then that she considered would be strong enough to handle what was, unbidden and undeterred, spilling from her mouth, on top of their own troubles, but stags didn't have troubles, did they?

She told it _everything_ – she talked about the war, talked about Marlene, even talked about Harry and the impending shattering of his world, which, for him, would go about at a considerably younger age than the one Lily was when it happened to her. She talked about her vacation – all the things she was trying to bubble-wrap with so many facades that she couldn't remember what had been at the centre of the tightly compressed ball of messy emotions. She let it all burst out, let the stress leave her shoulders and figuratively rest on this random stag's back.

It took it all quite seriously, keeping its eyes wide open and fixed on her very quietly, and very unmoving. She didn't know if stags could frown, but his forehead was all rumpled the whole time she was speaking.

When she was done, her throat felt hoarse and her heart a hundred beats lighter. The stag seemed unsure if she had finished – but she smiled and kissed the top of his head. "Thank you – for listening." She chuckled. "Even though I probably have a better chance of understanding you than you do of understanding me."

The stag looked forlorn at that – but then she stood up, and so did it. She was halfway down the mount when she realized that it _was _following her. "I can't take you home." She told it gently. "And I think you'll be more comfortable up there anyway. Or is that sheep?"

The stag seemed impatient with her, nudging her leg forward and not at all as interested in natural habitats as he was in her rants about the war. She realized that if she was going to be viciously mauled by a stag, she ought to be within reach of population, so she let it follow her. She kept using that excuse and pretended she wasn't enjoying the company of an animal when she hadn't been enjoying the company of any human whatsoever for a while now.

But it stopped moving by the time she was about fifty feet from home. She raised a questioning eyebrow at it, but it just moved its snout silently in an eerie ghost representation of a human smile, and she turned back and walked into the cottage quietly so as not to wake her family.

Before she went to sleep, however, she peeked out the window to catch a glance of the huge shape one last time – but it had gone, and all she could hear then was the sound of a large animal galloping away.

That night was the first night of the holiday nightmare-free, even though she fell asleep with a weird thought in her mind.

_Hooves, huh?_


End file.
